Telangana CM Chandrasekhar Rao acts FAST before GHMC polls

Hyderabad: The Telangana government’s sudden decision to do away with 1956 as the cut-off year for determining local status of students is being viewed as a “political strategy” of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in the run up to the GHMC elections to please Seemandhra people in the city.

In the first cabinet meeting held in July last year, Mr Rao himself had come out with the FAST scheme with 1956 cut-off year norm and took to task ministers who objected to it citing “legal complications”.

But on Friday, Mr Rao proposed the scrapping of the 1956 norm on the ground that “poor students” will be impacted, which surprised ministers, who had never dared to discuss the 1956 issue with him again keeping in mind their earlier dressing down.

Read: Andhra Pradesh benefits from scrapped FAST scheme

Despite the court’s rapping the government over the 1956 issue, Mr Rao stuck to his guns and asked officials to draft a counter affidavit effectively in support of TS government’s stand in the High Court.

The Chief Minister was upset with officials for not presenting the arguments before the court effectively, which was resulting in a setback for the government.

In fact, the CM had convened a meeting with senior officials of the education and law department early this month and made it clear that there is no question of the government going back on FAST and directed them to draft a report justifying the 1956 scheme which can be submitted to the courts.

However, he suddenly went back on FAST before the scheduled cabinet meeting on Friday. Even ministers were not aware that this issue was part of the agenda.

Sources said when Kadiam Srihari, Deputy CM holding the education portfolio said in the meeting that FAST would earn a ‘bad name’ for the government, the previous education minister G. Jagdish Reddy, under whose tenure this sche-me was announced, arg-ued in support of FAST.

The CM intervened and told the minister that Mr Srihari was right and FAST needed to be scrapped. Earlier, in the first cabinet meeting, when a minister objected to FAST saying that it would create unnecessary trouble for the government when it was trying to lay the red-carpet for industrialists from all states and countries, Mr Rao retorted angrily saying that FAST would not impact industrial investments in any way and dismissed the arguments as ‘meaningless’.

However, the GHMC polls in which Seemand-hra people will play a decisive role has forced KCR to change his mind.