K Chandrasekhar Rao outwits Opposition

Hyderabad: The TS government appears to have changed its strategy on creation of new districts. As per its earlier plan, the final notification on new districts was to be released in the last week of September to pave the way for their launch from Dasara, which falls on October 11 this year.

Now, the state government plans to release the final notification on Dasara day itself. This will ensure that new districts face no legal hurdles for their Dasara launch.

Opposition parties are planning to move High Court against new districts once the final notification is released. The Opposition parties have been terming the new district proposals as unscientific and aimed at serving the political interests of the ruling party.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who held a meeting on new districts with ministers and senior officials at his camp office, is learnt to have suggested issuing final notification on Dasara itself simultaneously with the launch of new districts.

Congress MLA D.K. Aruna, TD MLA A. Revanth Reddy and several other Opposition leaders have already announced their decision to move the High Court against new district proposals once the government issues final notification in this regard.

The government issued preliminary notification on August 22 and gave a month for the people to submit their objections and/or suggestions on reorganisation of nine of the 10 existing districts and creation of 17 new districts, taking the total to 27.

As many as 43,528 objections were received till 7 pm on Friday, with the highest number of 12,205 objections coming from Karimnagar district followed by 11,839 from Mahbubnagar districts.

Both these districts are witnessing intense agitations demanding creation of Siricilla and Gadwal districts, which has been turned down by the government.

Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma held a meeting in the Secretariat with senior officials of all departments on Friday to review the arrangements for launching of the new districts on Dasara.

He directed agriculture, revenue, education, police and panchayat raj departments to gear up for functioning in new districts, revenue divisions and mandals from Day-1. It was also decided to merge about 20 departments which are discharging duties of similar nature so as to rationalise the utilisation of staff and allocate them to new districts.