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The Telangana government will soon take up a comprehensive household survey to create an accurate database of people and their socioeconomic status for the purpose of preventing frauds, misuse of government schemes and public money.
“Every survey conducted in the past and the available database of the households is inaccurate. This had led to large-scale frauds in every government programme in the united Andhra Pradesh state. I will not let that happen In the new state of Telangana,” chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao said on Friday while explaining the purpose of the new household survey at a preparatory meeting with field-level officers.
The survey involves every detail of the household that requires for extending various welfare programmes, covering about 8.6 million families, in the state. The chief minister asked the administration to complete this massive exercise in a single day as is being done with the conduct of polling in general elections. The situation is so bad that even the government does not know the accurate number of its own employees, he said.
The chief minister cited the issuance of 9.1 million white ration cards (BPL cards that entitle subsidised food and other schemes) in Telangana — a figure that is far in excess of the total number of 8.6 million families living in the state. “White ration cards have become a menace as they were being treated as a basic proof for availing of every government welfare programme,” he said. He warned the field-level officials of stern action if they are found issuing false certificates to ineligible persons for wrongfully claiming government sops.
Henceforth, the new database will be used as a standard for implementing every programme besides in designing government policy initiatives, he said. It has also commissioned a survey of the available government lands in every district for use of industries and other purposes.
Fee reimbursement only to students of TS origin
The chief minister reiterated his government's stand that only native Telangana students would be given fee reimbursement. The state has got every right to lay down its own guidelines for the purpose of determining the nativity of people, he said while citing the judgements of the Supreme Court .
“A whopping Rs 4,000 crore bill is being generated under the fee reimbursement programme just in the current year. Why should we pay for students who are ineligible or those hailing from other states? This is public money and I am not entitled to give away public money to charity,” he said.
The state government is also launching land for the landless Dalit family from August 15, and based on the availability of land it is willing to earmark Rs 1,500 crore to Rs 2,000 crore in the annual plan for this purpose this year, he said. There are about 300,000 landless Dalit families in the state and the government would buy 3 acres for each family besides providing irrigation facility, according to information available.
