Telangana charges Andhra with stealing online data for EoDB ranking

The Telangana government on Tuesday alleged that the Andhra Pradesh government resorted to unethical means by stealing the online application submitted to the Centre for Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) ranking.

Taking a serious view of this, the Telangana government lodged a complaint with the Cyber Crime Police, which registered a case after preliminary enquiry that website information and template copyrights theft has been committed.

Telangana alleged that the acommercial court fee and process fee online payment' application developed by its law department on June 28 and submitted the same to the Union government's Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) for EoDB ranking was stolen by Andhra.

The officials pointed out that their Andhra counterparts even copied the spelling mistake on the page.

Telangana brought the issue to the central government's notice with Industries Minister K. T. Rama Rao dashing off a letter to the Union Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

The minister submitted the proofs and also explained the ways and means being resorted by certain states to top EoDB rankings.

Rama Rao, who is son of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, said the spirit of the EoDB is getting affected when some states are trying to resort to unethical practices. He appealed to the Union minister to give priority to only those states who have brought qualitative changes at the field level and not those states who resort to unethical means.

He requested that the reports submitted by the respective states after June 30 should be looked into thoroughly.

For awarding EoDB rankings to the states, the DIPP had given a questionnaire comprising 340 questions and set up an online dashboard to answer these questions.

Though the deadline for submission of EODB questionnaire ended on June 30, the DIPP has extended the deadline till July 7.

The Telangana government claimed it submitted Commercial Courts application on June 28 while Andhra had not done this till June 30. After the DIPP extended the deadline, Andhra copied and submitted the same, officials said.

They alleged that Andhra improved its ranking through unethical practices.

EoDB ranking on DIPP website on July 5 shows Telangana at second place and Andhra at third. Telangana was at second and Andhra at 19th position on June 12.

--IANS

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