By June 2, Telangana to have 24 districts

Hyderabad: Fourteen new districts will be formed by June 2, 2016, the second anniversary of Telangana state formation, taking the number of districts in the state to 24.

The new districts are being created in Telangana after a gap of 37 years. Ranga Reddy, created in 1978, was the last district.

The government has directed collectors to furnish details of the 10 current districts on availability of schools, colleges, hospitals, transport facilities, government offices etc. both revenue-division-wise and mandal-wise within a month so as to meet the deadline of June 2, 2016, for reorganising the existing districts and creating new ones.

Collectors have been asked to ensure that each district has at least five to six Assembly constituencies.

The new districts are being created as per Section 3 of the AP District (Formation) Act, 1974, which has been adopted by the TS government.

The TRS government wants to have three years before the next elections.

At least 56 more AIS officers needed
The TRS wants to have time to get the administration going in the new districts before the 2019 elections.

There was uncertainty over the deadline as the state government, which had constituted a five-member committee headed by the chief secretary on September 28 to recommend new districts, had not stipulated any timeframe to submit the report.

However, the Revenue department has issued a circular to all the district collectors to furnish these details within a month.

This follows several ministers taking up the issue with Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao during the last two weeks to ensure creation of new districts by June 2, 2016 so as to streamline the administration three years ahead of Assembly elections in 2019.

Though the committee is yet to recommend the number of new districts to be created, TRS leaders said that Mr Rao had already taken an in-principle decision to create 14 new districts before June 2, 2016.

“The creation of 14 new districts would require at least an additional 56 All India Service (AIS) officers, including collectors, joint collectors, SPs, ASPs etc. We need to write to the Centre at least six months in advance for allotment of additional AIS officers. For this, we have to complete the process of identifying the boundaries of existing and new districts by January. To meet these deadlines, the collectors were asked to submit the reports within a month,” said a senior official.