Hyderabad: The process to create new districts in TS made some headway at the district collectors' conference chaired by Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma at the Secretariat on Monday. Collectors submitted revised proposals on new districts with maps and boundaries to the CS and CCLA Raymond Peter after Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao pointed out in the previous conference held two weeks ago that the proposals were unscientific and he wanted collectors to take up a scientific study again.
Mr Rao found fault over the earlier proposals on huge disparity in population between the proposed districts stating that while some had less than 10 lakh population, others had over 30 lakh. With this, the collectors came out with revised proposals and tried to arrive at uniformity in population in every proposed district ranging from 11 lakh to 20 lakh and the total mandals between 20 and 25 and number of employees between 7,000 and 17,000.
However, setting up of new collectorates, head offices and reorganisation of existing employees were the major issues raised by the collectors. The reorganisation of some existing employees to accommodate them in new district headquarters would change their cadre from district-cadre to state-cadre, which will pose a problem with regard to service rules. Collectors said this issue needs to be addressed at the earlier; else the process of creating new districts would be hit.
“The CS has sought a special meeting of principal secretaries and HoDs of all departments by this month-end to discuss on reorganisation of existing staff, and setting up of the collectorates and head offices,” Mr Peter said. It was proposed to sanction Rs 100 crore to each new district to set up collectorates, offices and other infrastructure facilities so that the new districts would come into force from Dasara, October 11 as announced by the CM.
