Telangana’s ambitious plan to add 15 more districts was likely to face a stumbling block due to the severe shortage of officials in various cadres.
As Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao is busy giving final touches to his plans of dividing the existing ten districts on the grounds of administrative convenience the officials were worried about its implementation as the State is already facing a serious shortage of officials specially in the All India Services cadre.
If the CM goes ahead with the plan of taking the total number of districts to 25, the State will need another 142 IAS, IPS and the IFS officers.
The Chief Minister during his meeting with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to discuss various issues including the drought situation, submitted a report underlining the need of more All India services officials in the State.
After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in June 2014, Telangana was allocated 163 IAS, 112 IPS and 65 IFS officers. After some of them went on deputation to the Central services, the state was left only with 110 IAS, 80 IPS and 49 IFS officers causing a severe crunch at the higher level of state administration.
For the newly planned 15 districts, the state will require at least 30 IAS officers as collector and joint collector, 15 IFS officers and 15 IPS officers as the district superintendent of police.
The state government was also seeking the nod of the Center to confer the IAS and IPS status on the senior officials of the state cadre to help over come the present crunch.
Officials were concerned that without getting more All India Service officers allocated to the state, the creation of new districts will further aggravate the crisis in Telangana.