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The Telangana Government has decided not to go ahead with the controversial columns in the Intense Household Survey pro forma that seek to know the ‘nativity’ of people living in Telangana, even as Andhra Pradesh leaders cry foul over it.
A pro forma, which is being circulated in a few social media groups, has three columns (21, 22 and 23) that want to know from which State the family hails from. An official source clarified that these columns will not figure in the final form that goes with enumerators.
The Telangana Government is conducting the survey on August 19 to ascertain the exact number of households, their socio, economic and health conditions. The massive survey would involve about four lakh government employees who will be visiting an estimated 85 lakh households on a single day.
IT and Panchayat Raj Minister K Taraka Rama Rao made it clear on Tuesday that there will be nothing in the survey that tries to probe the origin of people. Allaying fears that it is aimed at identifying non-Telanganaites in the State, he said it is purely a demographic study with an objective to weed out fake ration cards.
“The number of ration cards far exceed the number of households in the State. This would put a huge burden on the State exchequer at different levels. We want to check this,” Taraka Rama Rao, son of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao, told reporters here on Tuesday on the sidelines of a meeting.
While the original draft that was distributed in the first week of this month didn’t have any mention on the origin of a person, a modified form was put in circulation this month with the three columns. These queries have triggered panic, more so in a section of population in the wake of controversy over the nativity of students to become eligible for fee reimbursement.
The Telangana Government had announced that it is not going to reimburse the fee for students who hail from Andhra Pradesh. It reportedly set 1956 as the cut-off date to determine the nativity. The Government wants to save about Rs 4,000 crore in this process.
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