The election of members of managing committees of District Cooperative Central Banks and District Cooperative Marketing Societies threw up an interesting scenario in Adilabad.

For 22 Class ‘A’ posts of twin societies, there are 77 voters but for eight Class ‘B’ posts the voter strength is just three. It effectively meant that five posts will be left vacant. The Class ‘B’ posts are filled with representatives of functional societies for trades like handloom weaving. Even for election to Class ‘A’ posts, the field was wide open for as many as 272 primary agricultural cooperative societies, farmers service cooperative societies and large sized cooperative societies. Since many of the societies were not functioning, the voter base was limited to 77 societies and as many voters.

The census collection after April will be without the use of paper and pen by enumerators. For the first time they will use mobile phone app to fill details. The entire enumeration will be handled by school teachers who will work under supervisors trained by headmasters, statistical and GHMC officers. Interestingly, one or two Group I officers who will not retire till December next year will constitute the master trainers for the entire programme.

District Collectors were given ‘clarity’ on one ‘important’ aspect of their functioning at the recent Collectors’ Conference held here after their reshuffle. They were reportedly told that they should not have any agenda of their own for implementing the development and welfare measures, but simply follow the agenda and procedures formulated by the State government. The ‘orders’ were given following several district collectors conceiving their own interventions to improve the delivery systems. This was in the backdrop of one collector designing a programme involving officials of other departments to improve the functioning of welfare hostels. Another collector thought out ways to improve the marketing of products made by women self-help groups as part of their livelihoods. More recently, when a collector approached higher-ups for taking up a special programme from improving literacy rate, he was said to have been snubbed and told not to think beyond his mandate as he was not a policy maker!

Two major political parties in the State that wish to grab power in the next elections from the TRS seem to be sailing in the same boat — that of leadership issue.

Rumours are rife about the change in leadership of the BJP and the Congress for some time and the cadre are eagerly waiting to see if there would be any change, and it at all there is a change, who would be the next one.

After the Huzurnagar byelections, TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy apparently submitted his resignation while there is a talk of K. Laxman leaving the post soon as he has completes his term. More than the cadre of these two parties, the ruling TRS seem to be anxious too to devise its plans to tackle the new leadership with the GHMC elections in sight.

Knee-jerk reaction

In a swift reaction to an adverse article published in a Telugu daily, the State government swung into troubleshooting mode by arranging half-a-dozen media conferences to condemn the report.

The convening of press conferences rattled the media corps as invitations from the offices of the Director General of Police and police commissioners of Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda flashed on their smart phones with barely any gap between each of them. What was even more shocking was that the messages read “top ranking IPS officers want to address the media on issues of utmost importance”.

At 4 p.m. the three urban commissioners condemned the newspaper report, an hour after which Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Jitender spoke to media on how the article damaged the reputation of the State Police Department and demoralised over one lakh police personnel. Then, the police officers association also chipped in.

The day ended with none other than Home Minister Mohammed Mahmood Ali addressing the media in which he threatened to slap a ₹1000 crore defamation suit against the daily if it did not tender an unconditional apology.

(N. Rahul, B. Chandrashekhar, R. Ravikanth Reddy and Abhinay Deshpande)