GHMC polls by month-end

Cabinet decision on 60 issues

A 11-hour long marathon meeting of the State Cabinet chaired by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Saturday discussed a host of issues pertaining to the State including GHMC elections, regularisation of services of contract employees, State finances, irrigation, health, district development and welfare.

Budget making with department-wise specifications and priorities in allocations for the year 2016- 2017 dominated the proceedings. Detailing on the deliberations, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao explained that the Cabinet had taken as many as 60 decisions at the day-long meeting. The most important of them is pertaining to GHMC elections. The elections would be concluded, as desired by the Supreme Court, by the end of January. The Cabinet decided on waiver of water tax dues amounting to Rs 457 crores in GHMC limits. It rationalised house taxes pertaining



to 3.10 lakh households. Those paying Rs 1200 per annum towards tax would now be required to pay only Rs 101.

The Cabinet also decided on regularisation of the services of some 18000 contract employees. It also decided to hike the wages of the outsourced employees. The Cabinet has directed the Chief Secretary to regularise the contract employees well before the end of January.

He said that the rule of reservation which was not followed in the first phase of the appointment of the contract employees would be looked into and in case of discrepancies, the backlog vacancies observed thereby would be filled under a special drive. The cabinet has sanctioned 15,628 teacher posts, 80 posts in Minority welfare department, 108 posts in Irrigation Department, 147 in MGM hospital at Warangal and 462 posts in the proposed medical college at Mahabubnagar. The Cabinet favored hike in the cost of the double-bedroom houses in GHMC limits from

Rs 5.3 lakh to Rs 7 lakh a unit.