2 NEWS HYDERABAD FRIDAY 6 FEBRUARY 2015 Sachin’s village in sad state n Official apathy hampers progress of Puttamrajuvari Kandriga n Recent visit of MP’s aides did not help n Development works going on at snail’s pace OUR BUREAU Nellore: Development works in Puttamrajuvari Kandriga, the sleepy village adopted by cricketer-turned-MP Sachin Tendulkar under the ‘Swachh Bharat’ campaign, are going at a snail’s pace thanks to the officials’ indifferent attitude. While some works are yet to be taken up due to lack of funds, others are not launched despite the availability of finances. The pace of works had picked up when N Srikant was the district collector and G Rekha Rani the joint collector. Having realised that the pace of development works is not what it ought to be, Sachin had recently sent his aides to speed up the process, but it did not help. There is reportedly no change in the progress of work. When the Rajya Sabha MP visited the village last year, officials had prepared grandiose plans to change the very face of Kandriga, which cannot even receive cell phone signals. They had prom- ised of providing wi-fi and other latest technologies with the collector allocating Rs 3 crore and Sachin offering to set apart Rs 2.79 crore from his MPLADS. The facilities to be made available included drinking water to 115 houses with metre connec- tions and 24-hour power connectivity (allocation of Rs 35 lakh) and underground drainage (Rs 45 lakh). Compost pits are to be built along with linking of houses with drainage pipeline. So far water supply has been arranged to only 65 houses. Funds are awaited for the Panchayat Raj department works like construction of community hall (cost Rs115.24 lakh), a waiting hall (Rs 3.52 lakh), pathway with concrete tiles (Rs 2.49 lakh) and Anganwadi school (Rs 9 lakh). An amount of Rs 13.5 lakh has been allocated for the school’s kitchen and dining hall. Building of a compound wall along the main road in the village, a burial ground and the school playground are yet to take off. Only some cement roads have been completed out of the funds allocated by the collector. Work of laying of the main approach road and side canals (for which Rs 50 lakh has been set aside) is yet to be launched, as also internal roads, side canals and cement roads in SC,ST Colony (cost Rs 120 lakh). ‘Pucca’ houses and village electrification are also yet to be completed. Gudur RDO Ravindra who has been appointed the nodal officer for overseeing the works is devoting personal attention to expedite them, according to sources. NDA slammed for not granting spl status to AP Kadapa: Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council C Ramachandraiah lashed out at the Centre for not granting special status to Andhra Pradesh and going back on several of its promises made during the passage of the AP Reorganisation Bill in Parliament last year. Speaking to the media here on Thursday, he said the BJP government was being ‘unconstitutional’ with regard to Andhra Pradesh and great injustice was being done to it by denying it special status. Ramachand raiah said Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu made a ﬁery speech in the Rajya Sabha that Andhra Pradesh would get special status for 10 years when the AP Reorganisation Bill was being passed and wondered why he was remaining silent now. He also criticised Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu for not being able to secure special ﬁnancial packages from the Centre for developing the State at a time when the State government did not have money in its coffers to pay even salaries. Ramachandraiah wondered as to what purpose such meagre amounts given by the NDA government would serve when the State needed huge amounts. The little sums of money that it got was only due to the pressure of the Congress, he said. Vizag to get ‘data factory’ to make AP ‘knowledge hub’ OUR BUREAU Hyderabad: To revolutionise services and systems in the new State using Big Data and predictive analytics, Dragonﬂy Data Factory founder and CEO Ram Pothula met Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu at Secretariat on Thursday and informed him that he was setting up a ‘data factory’ in Visakhapatnam. Pothula reportedly told the Chief Minister that the factory would have two components. The ﬁrst one is model for AP government, which will take vast quantities of static data present with government departments from birth records to land, agriculture land, output, etc. This will reduce fraud, automate manual processes, maximise productivity of agency personnel and encourage smarter decisions by extracting actionable insights. The second model will be to attract international clients. Pothula told the Chief Minister that the new unit would be a software-deﬁned cloud-enabled data factory that would offer data mining, predictive analytics and generate insights using sensors and smart gadgets. The Chief Minister asked Pothula and his team to prepare a report on the best practices in the world in the ﬁeld of predictive analytics and carry out gap analysis to understand where Andhra Pradesh stood in knowledge segment. Stating that he aimed to make the State a ‘knowledge hub,’ the Chief Minister said the Dragonﬂy team could also identify a consortium of companies and universities which could assist the company in data science and customer insights and work in tandem with the State government. “I want to have the entire government data on cloud,” he said, suggesting Dragonﬂy to attract players who will be interested to set up their data warehouses in Visakhapatnam. Dragonﬂy Data Factory is also developing an operating system customising it to industry, giving the clients complete freedom to combine their choice of tools in order to mine, manage and monetise data. Awareness campaign on multi-organ donation Kakinada: The Badam Balakrishna Eye Bank which started its services in the year 2007 succeeded in its attempt in collecting corneas to cater to the needs of people who are in dire need of eye sight. In the last eight years the organisation could able to help more than 2400 persons in getting eye sight through surgeries in permitted hospitals. As part of extension of its service activities, the Badam Charitable Trust sponsored Dr D V Raju Multi Organ Foundation to collect human organs from brain dead patients. It could able to secure more than 2500 pledges for organ donation from people across the two Godavari districts and even from other parts of the state. The chairperson of Badam Charitable Trust which sponsored the multi-organ foundation, Dr Badam Balakrishna, said that as the aspect of donating organs like kidneys is confined to family members only in these parts, they are hoping for the permission to eligible local hospitals soon to carry out the activity. At present the facility is available in Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Guntur and Hyderabad only, Dr Balakrishna clarified. Hyd to be key centre in Indo-US defence tie-up Hyderabad/New Delhi: The United States on Thursday said that American companies will make Hyderabad and Bangalore "important sources" for cutting-edge technology as co-development and co-production of defence articles was the new course for collaborative partnership between the two countries. The US also said that talks between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during former’s visit last month for Republic Day celebrations had sowed the seeds that have the potential to make US-India partner- DRDO has been in the forefront in defence research & development works and dedicatedly working towards enhancing self-reliance in the defence systems ship the "deﬁning counter-terrorism relationship for the region in the 21st century". Home to the prestigious DRDO and Ordnance factory on its outskirts, Hyderabad would be the nat- ural centre for advancing IndoAmerican cooperation in advancing defence tie-up. DRDO has been in the forefront in defence research & development works and dedicatedly working towards enhancing self-reliance in the defence systems. It undertakes design & development leading to production of world class weapon systems and equipment. With logistics support from DRDO, India’s nuclear weapons-capable Agni missile was test ﬁred. Talking about the way forward in Indo-US ties, American Ambassa- dor to India, Richard Verma, said that perhaps the truest test of a friendship between countries is the degree to which their armed forces trust and collaborate with each other. "Ties between the US and Indian defence establishments took immense strides forward during President (Obama)'s visit," he said at a seminar at the Vivekananda International Foundation here. "The US defence industry will now make Bangalore and Hyderabad important sources for cutting-edge technology," he said. Telangana, AP Inc seek tax sops TS too seeks Central funds for backward districts Continued from P1 New Delhi/Hyderabad: The Telangana government has decided to adopt a cautious approach in regard to the special package that was announced to the Andhra Pradesh government on Wednesday. However, Telangana’s special representative in Delhi S Venugopalachary asked the Centre to release funds also to the backward districts of Telangana under the Backward Regions Grant Fund (BGRF) on the lines of its allocation of funds to the backward districts of AP on Wednesday. The ministers and officials said Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao who is now on a visit to Delhi would take up all pending issues, including devolution of funds and the incentives the state should get as per the AP State Re-organisation act 2014 with the Centre and the Prime Minister. They said that they would not like to comment on the decision of the Chowdary further pointed out: “We were expecting income tax and central excise concessions as announced by the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Rajya Sabha when the bifurcation bill was taken up for discussion. But the Central government has not spelled out anything on that front”. FATPCCI vice president V Anil Reddy said the Centre’s announcement has made it clear that AP and TS would not get special category status. “We expected a lot, but many people are aware of the fact that AP and TS don’t meet norms laid down for the special category status that offer tax beneﬁts,” he said. Centre but would appeal to it to give funds for development of the backward regions of the state and also give special category status to Telangana. Venugopalachary said the state government has been requesting the Centre to allocate funds citing backwardness of the area and also because of the presence of large number of Dalits and minorities. He cited that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants the states to be ﬁnancially strong so that the federal structure of the country will be robust. Welcoming the Centre’s decision to grant Rs 850 crore to the residuary Andhra Pradesh and tax incentives to both the states, he said the pending grants from centre to the state was to the tune of Rs 11,498 crores for various centrally assisted schemes such as Panchayat Raj and Rural Development to social welfare projects related to women, children and disabled people before the end of this ﬁnancial year. KCR makes govt staff happy Continued from P1 Stating that there were several anomalies and scale disparities in salaries, KCR announced that the Pradeep Chandra Committee would continue its work to look into such issues. The decision was taken without wasting much time as the Election Commission was likely to announce the schedule for Council elections anytime. In the event the pay revision would get postponed further on account of election code of conduct com- ing into effect, he explained. Those who participated in the meeting included Pradeep Chandra-led highpowered committee members, parliamentary secretary Srinivas Goud, presidents and representatives from TNGOs’, TGOs’, Secretariat Employees’ Union, PRTU and Doctors’ Association. Meanwhile, leaders of various employee unions congratulated the Chief Minister for announcing the PRC. TNGO president G Deviprasad thanked the chief minister for the ges- ture and called upon Telangana employees to strive hard for fulﬁlling the dream of ‘Bangaru Telangana’. It may be mentioned here that employee associations have been demanding a ﬁtment of 69.10 per cent ﬁtment. The ninth PRC recommended 27 per cent ﬁtment and 22 per cent IR while government after protracted negotiations offered 39 per cent ﬁtment. Now the tenth PRC reportedly recommended 29 per cent while employees were already getting an IR of 27 per cent from January 1, 2014.