Telangana CM designate K Chandrasekhar Rao tries to make his mark

Hyderabad: Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao is trying to make his own mark on the state administration as the first Chief Minister of Telangana.

He is utilising the time till the Appointed Day of June 2 by meeting bureaucrats, industrialists, academics, employee leaders and others and taking inputs from them regarding the immediate changes that need to be brought in various sectors to achieve speedy growth and good governance.

Mr Rao has already started holding unofficial review meetings with officials to take stock of the situation.

Even while selecting his team in the Chief Minister’s Office, he has opted for fresh faces from the Central and other state cadres who have not been associated with earlier CMs. He is regularly meeting the top administration and police brass and taking note of the situation on a day-to-day basis.

In a way, Mr Rao is ensuring that there is no similarity between him and earlier CMs (of Andhra Pradesh) in terms of appointing officers in his peshi or working from the new CM’s camp office in Kundanbagh against the allotted one in Begumpet, from where earlier CMs, Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, K. Rosaiah and N. Kiran Kumar Reddy discharged their duties.

Mr Rao has been in regular touch with some of his close confidants like My Home Constructions’ chief Rameshwar Rao, Prof Ghanta Chakrapani and IIT trainer Chukka Ramaiah for their advise regarding the priorities of his government and the ways and means to achieve results in a time-bound manner.

Mr Rao has personally visited Mr Rameshwar Rao’s residence twice and spent over an hour with him after he became CM-designate to discuss various issues on the infrastructure front.

He is also giving top priority to Telangana employee associations’ leaders and has been meeting them daily and seeking their inputs for making his government “employee friendly”. The employees too have reciprocating positively by offering to work additional hours to achieve his dream of “Bangaru Telangana”.

Mr Rao has also been meeting representatives of the Telangana Advocates’ JAC and seeking their advise on legal courses of action his government can take against contentious issues such as giving power to both Telangana and AP governments on about 107 state-level institutions to avail common services for a period of 10 years.

Mr Rao is also strongly opposing common admissions and quotas for AP students in Telangana for a period of 10 years and is seeking the advise of legal experts on this.