KT Rama Rao writes to Nirmala Sitaraman over Telangana, AP e-theft row
Hyderabad: Telangana minister for IT and industries K.T. Rama Rao has urged Union commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman to take steps to verify all compliances uploaded after June 30 under Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) initiative. He said that though extension of date from June 30 to July 7 was done with good intention, certain states have misused it with wrong claims.
In a letter addressed to the Union minister, Mr Rama Rao said that states which worked hard and imbibed the spirit of EoDB by internalising it in the state’s system and ensured systemic processes during the year should be given due credit and their efforts should not be undermined by some other states adopting practices which are unfair and not transparent.
His letter comes in the wake of Telangana Industries Department lodging an e-theft case with Cyber Crime authorities. Industries secretary Arvind Kumar stated that they were dismayed at the stealing of copyrighted software.
“The screenshots, typed matter and even a wrongly spelt word was used as it was in the en-try submitted by Andhra Pradesh. We checked with the software developing agency which claimed innocence. We brought the issue to the notice of DIPP and the Cyber Crime branch in Hyderabad,” he said.
The NDA government has initiated the EoDB ranking for all states to give an idea of which states in the country have the most investor friendly policies.
Telangana stood at 13th position last year much to the disappointment of the government. This year, they took on the challenge to improve as a matter of prestige and sent answers to 340 questions ask-ed by DIPP before the June 30 deadline, later extended by a week.
Arvind Kumar stated that 2,300 permissions were given by the department in the last year ensuring transparency. When contacted DCP (CCS) Avinash Mohanty said, “The complaint is under investigation. We are verifying who developed the website and who are involved in this. Based on that, we will proceed.”
