Complaint free implementation of welfare schemes and other challenges ahead for new Telangana CS Sanjay Jaju

The new Chief Secretary of Telangana Sanjay Jaju, who took over charge from outgoing Chief Secretary K. Ramakrishna Rao, will have a challenging time as the bureaucratic head of the State in the coming days.

His prime focus will be on streamlining the administrative functioning and ensuring effective coordination between senior bureaucrats of different departments so as to deliver the fruits of welfare and developmental programmes to the last mile. The real challenge for the new Chief Secretary is complaint-free implementation of the welfare schemes like Rythu Bharosa at a time when the State is struggling to manage its finances.

Efforts by the government thus far to enhance revenue receipts have no doubt yielded results, but not the level expected. The government can ill afford to increase taxes and duties to mop up revenues as it could have an impact in the ensuing Assembly elections less than two and a half years away.

In this background, the new Chief Secretary will have to strike a fine balance between spending on welfare/developmental schemes and meeting financial commitments relating to repayment of interest and principal of huge loans inherited by the government.

The demands which mounts pressure on finance decisions

Coupled with the welfare schemes is the mounting pressure from the employees to release five pending instalments of Dearness Allowance (DA) and implementation of the second Pay Revision Commission (PRC) recommendations, costs of which will be a tall order for the State Government at the present juncture.

Focus on making senior officials to visit field

On the administrative side, the new Chief Secretary will have to focus ensuring that senior officials visit the field to understand the effectiveness of implementation of various schemes first hand in addition to managing the growing demands. There have been repeated warnings to officials from Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy against confining themselves to AC comforts but to little avail so far.

Financial assistance from Centre

Another important area of his focus is likely to be on convincing the Central Government and securing financial assistance for flagship projects of the Congress government like expansion of Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) and construction of the Bharat Future City. With Mr. Jaju away on Central deputation for over a decade, he is likely to take some time to understand the priorities of the State government and ascertain the cooperation he can expect from officials at different levels so that he can chart out his course of action.