BJP slams KCR govt, says more dist will increase red tape

Opposition BJP has slammed the proposed move of the TRS government in Telangana to substantially increase the number of districts, saying it would only lead to increased bureaucracy, red-tape and wasteful expenditure. "We today live in a world where technology connects all, even rural landscape and micro-administrative blocks. Increasing districts through proper plan to a few more for governance-related reasons is acceptable, but jumping from 10 districts to 30-plus raises more than just eyebrows," BJP Telangana spokesperson, Krishna Saagar Rao said. Forming these many districts only leads to increased bureaucracy, red-tape, wasteful expenditure, maximum government and minimum governance, he alleged. The draft government notification issued on August 22 proposed to add 17 new districts, from the existing ten. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has formed the committee led by MP, K Keshava Rao, to examine the possibility of creating four more new districts -- Gadwal, Jangaon, Sircilla and Asifabad, and asked them to submit report by October seven afternoon. The state government has said new districts would come into existence from the Dussehra festival (October 11). Krishna Saagar Rao said that a few years ago, prior to the advent of robust internet enabled connectivity, network enabled citizen services, the chunking of administrative units to smaller size could be looked at with a different perspective of good governance, that too with conservative, systemic, scientific and democratic methodology. "The same process today looks quite unwarranted, financially unviable and administratively primitive with (the availability now of) numerous technologies as service delivery enablers and cheaper last-mile connectivity tools," he said. The BJP spokesperson said governments today can provide almost all services without inconvenience to the common man through technology and electronic interfaces. "Physical proximity to administrators for better citizen services is a thing of the past and completely obsolete in today's context." He noted that nine of Telangana's ten districts are rated under-developed by the 14th Finance Commission. "CM KCR's unthoughtful initiative will bounce the number of districts from 10 at once to 30-plus and will only result in creating 20 more poor and under-developed districts. The entire process is a huge disaster in making," Rao said.