New secretariat plan gathers steam

HYDERABAD: The government's plans to construct a new secretariat as per vaastu principles that chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao holds dear, appear to have acquired urgency on Monday.
A series of decisions were learnt to have been taken by the government on shifting offices of the Telangana government from the existing secretariat complex to other locations in the next 10 days.
Departments functioning now from various buildings in the secretariat will be shifted to buildings where their heads of department currently function from.
For instance, the forest department staff will be accommodated at Aranya Bhavan in Saifabad. Similarly, the roads & buildings, rural development, irrigation, housing, panchayat raj and BC welfare will be shifted to the office complexes that are outside the secretariat.
Staff from the rest of the departments are to be moved to the Burgula Ramakrishna Rao Bhavan that also houses the head office of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation GHMC).
With all department heads receiving instructions to get their act together in terms of shifting out of the secretariat, the stage is now set for beginning the demolition of some of the office blocks in the complex. It was only on Sunday that the chief minister met governor ESL Narasimhan and handed over a copy of the resolution passed by the state cabinet asking the Andhra Pradesh government to hand over the buildings under its control both in the secretariat complex and elsewhere in the city.
The Telangana government has already offered alternate accommodation for the Andhra Pradesh government staff, the few who have been left behind in Hyderabad after Andhra Pradesh shifted its capital to Amaravati city.
It is expected that with several auspicious days and muhurats coming up after the Deepavali festival on October 30, the government will set up a time soon to begin demolition of the existing secretariat complex as the first step to building the new one.