Telangana rule to have TRS hallmark

Hyderabad: Ministers, MLAs and the state government official machinery are gearing up for a “TRS-mark” rule. After the landslide win in the Warangal Lok Sabha bypoll, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao claimed that he had spent the last 17 months planning for the future, and that the TRS-mark rule would begin after the GHMC elections in January 2016.

The party said that the TRS-mark rule would lay more focus on education, employment, irrigation projects.

CM to implement plan from March

A plan of action has been devised for achieving the TRS-mark rule for the remaining tenure with specific targets for each sector. Ministers will get key roles wherein each will get funds of Rs 25 crore every year to take up development activities in their entire district instead of confining to their Assembly constituency.

TRS sources said the CM had extensively consulted government advisers and experts of various fields from June 2014 to February 2015 on how to achieve the TRS-mark rule in TS. Based on their suggestions, officials were asked to draft an action plan, which was done by June this year.

The CM later made some changes and recently came up with a final action plan, which he wants to implement from March 2016. Even the recent proposal to advance presenting the state budget to February against the tradition of presenting it after the Centre’s general Budget in March is being viewed as part of the TRS-mark rule.

There’s also the proposal to allocate an unprecedented Rs 25,000 crore under just one account head, to take up irrigation projects. It was also proposed to do away with traditional Finance department approvals on such spendings, to check delays in sanctioning of funds and for faster execution of projects.

“TRS-mark rule is not about being confined in the Secretariat in Hyderabad and give directions to officials on implementation. It is about involvement of all heads — right from the CM to the sarpanch level — who have to spend at least 15 days in a month touring their constituencies and villages and monitoring the development works on the spot.

There will be target-specific and time-bound programmes that need to be met and performance of all ministers, MLAs, MLCs will be reviewed periodically,” said A. Indrakaran Reddy, housing minister.

TRS sources said Mr Rao himself would tour the districts for 15 days every month from March 2016, after the budget session of the Legislature concluded. “At present, MLAs are being given constituency development funds of only Rs 1.50 crore per year, which is not sufficient to meet emergency needs.

As MLAs, the ministers too are getting the same amount. There are several emergency works that can be taken up for which we have to wait for months together to get the Finance department’s approval, due to which the works get delayed unnecessarily,” said Talasani Srinivas Yadav, commercial taxes minister.
 

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