The State government is actively examining a proposal to nominate a team of senior officials as nodal officers for holding consultations with the Central government on the contentious issues like bifurcation of Schedule IX and X institutions with neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
Designating some officials to exclusively handle the bifurcation related issues has been necessitated as it was felt that the communication sent by the State government was not reaching the department concerned at the Central level. “The letters sent from the State government are not reaching the concerned departments in the Central government,” a senior official told The Hindu.
A team of senior officials who visited New Delhi recently were surprised to know that a communication addressed to the Transport and Highways Department Secretary explaining about the “unilateral proposals” of AP government relating to division of APSRTC could not be traced in their office. The same was the case with the letter relating to the bifurcation of the erstwhile State Finance Corporation “unilaterally” by the neighbouring State.
Senior officials of the department informed the State delegation that they did not possess the letter addressed by the Telangana State Finance Corporation and the State officials were forced to hand over a copy of the letter afresh. The Union officials said they were yet to receive reply to queries they raised while dealing with the enhancement of Assembly seats in Telangana at a time when the Telangana State Chief Electoral Officer had already forwarded a detailed reply on the status of the three constituencies which lost some mandals to AP post bifurcation.
“These gaps in communication are due to responses given by the individual departments on their own without routing them through a nodal agency,” the official said. The seriousness of the issue could be gauged from the fact that the minutes of the meeting of committee constituted on bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh Bhavan in New Delhi along with the proposals made by the neighbouring State on June 6 did not reach the Telangana government until July 26.
The government was therefore requested to route the communication through General Administration (State Reorganisation) wing so that the representations submitted by the State are monitored effectively and pursued for early action.