Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has placed himself sixth in the latest performance appraisal of his council of ministers, while his son, minister Nara Lokesh, is at number nine. NDA ally and Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan is ranked 11.
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief, in his fourth term as CM, including two tenures heading a united Andhra Pradesh, has introduced a system to regularly evaluate his cabinet colleagues and state bureaucrats.
The current rankings are based on the speed with which ministers clear e-files. This is part of Naidu’s efforts to replace manual files—and thereby reduce the time taken to clear them—by Sankranti, the Telugu harvest festival which falls in mid-January.
An earlier rankings chart revealed during a cabinet meeting at Amaravati in February, based on the clearance of official files, had put Naidu in the sixth position and Lokesh in the eighth. But the placement of Janasena Party (JSP) chief Kalyan at the 10th spot in the 25-member council—two notches below Lokesh—had then been viewed by the alliance party leaders as a slight to their leader. There has been no such reaction so far this time.
The present rankings were not revealed publicly, but during a CM-chaired review meeting with ministers, secretaries, and heads of departments at the Secretariat Wednesday.
Assessing the state of affairs of various departments and the performance of both ministers and bureaucrats, Naidu called for “renewing administrative discipline, people-centric governance, while adopting technology-driven efficiency”.
As Bhaskar Katamneni, secretary for information technology, electronics and communications, presented the rankings chart, Naidu expressed displeasure that some ministers took as much as 15 days on average to clear their e-files.
According to the chart accessed by ThePrint, Mandipalli Ramprasad Reddy, minister for transport, youth and sports, has been ranked last, taking an average response time of 15 days, 19 hours, 53 minutes to clear 670 of 690 files.
Kollu Ravindra, minister for mines and geology, stood second last at 24th spot, taking 15 days, five hours and 23 minutes on average to clear 912 files. Finance Minister Payyavula Keshav is at 23, taking 11 days, three hours and 36 minutes, to clear 1,587 files.
On the top end are Dola Sree Bala Veeranjaneya Swamy, minister for social welfare and disabled and senior citizen welfare, water resources minister Nimmala Ramanaidu, and minister for law and justice as well as minority welfare, Nasyam Mohammed Farook, who hold the first three ranks respectively. All of them took two days and a few hours to clear their files.
All e-files were received by the ministers’ offices between 15 July and 9 December, a day before the review.
Being the chief minister, Naidu dealt with the highest number of files. He received 6,713 files and cleared 7,054, including some forwarded/opening balance ones. Naidu took an average of three days, eight hours and 18 minutes.
Meanwhile, Lokesh, minister for human resources development, IT, electronics and communication, and real-time governance (RTG), received 3,916 files and disposed of 3,935, taking three days, 14 hours and 10 minutes.
Kalyan—steering the panchayat raj, rural development, rural water supply, environment, forest science and technology departments—received 2,004 files and disposed of 2,068, taking on average four days, nine hours and 43 minutes.
’15 days’ average not acceptable’
When IAS officer Katamneni cited sensitivity to explain the delay in Mandipalli and Ravindra’s departments—such as files seeking the dropping of anti-corruption and vigilance cases—Naidu asked: “Are those cases more sensitive than those that come on my desk and I deal with?”
He said at the meeting, “Fifteen days’ average for files clearance is not acceptable. Yes, one has to be sensitive while going through some files, but then the ‘it’s ok’ attitude should stop. There should be transparency, everybody has to fall in line.”
He offered to sit with any minister or senior bureaucrat to understand intricate files and guide them in quick clearance.
When Finance Minister Payyavula sought to explain that the delay in some instances was due to departments overshooting the budget limitations in their proposals, Naidu reminded the gathering that the state is not flush with funds, but “is faced with a hand-to-mouth kind of financial struggle situation”.