Hyderabad: The Telangana Rashtra Samithi government’s plan to launch a slew of schemes by Dasara and Diwali is running into a time barrier. The new date being talked about is November 1. For many of these schemes, the beneficiaries can only be identified based on the data from the Intensive Household Survey. Analysing the data is expected to take another month.
The government is under tremendous pressure from the intended beneficiaries besides Opposition parties who are taking to the streets to protest the delay in waiving crop loans, announcing recruitment exam dates, finalising fee reimbursement, scholarship eligibility norms and enhanced pensions among others.
All these sops were approved by the Telangana Cabinet on July 16 and were supposed to be launched by Dasara, on October 3, and Diwali, October 23. The government is also coming under fire for the delay in granting ex gratia of Rs 10 lakh and a government job to the families of Telangana martyrs, and lifting of cases filed on activists who took part in the statehood agitation since 2001. The government is yet to prepare the list of these families and activists.
IT minister K T Rama Rao on Saturday gave indications that the schemes could be delayed by stating that the pension policy would be implemented from November 1. Irrigation minister T Harish Rao said that though the government was trying for a Dasara launch, there would not be a problem if it stretches beyond that.
“Our aim is to check bogus ones and only genuine beneficiaries should avail the schemes. What would happen if there is a delay by few more weeks? We cannot allow bogus ones to siphon off public funds in our hurry to launch the new schemes,” Mr Rao said. The survey was conducted on August 18 and the plan was to computerise the data in two weeks. However, the survey is still incomplete in the GHMC area, and a re-survey is being planned to cover the families that were missed out.
“It is difficult to arrive at the list of eligible beneficiaries by Dasara-Diwali as data has to be scrutinised thoroughly and needs to be cross-checked with Aadhaar. There will be random inspection of data with various departments. We need to scrutinise the data of about 1.05 crore households. This will take over a month and will be ready by November,” said a senior official involved with survey.
