VIJAYAWADA: The State government appointed retired IAS officer A Murali as an advisor (infrastructure) to the School Education department. Orders to that effect were issued on Friday.
Murali, who worked as director of Telangana State Archives, took voluntary retirement in July 2019, 10 months ahead of his official retirement date. He cited his being sidelined as the reason for taking voluntary retirement.
“There are several others who have been dissatisfied. I should have resigned much earlier. There are no politics involved. I came out with an objective to do something worthwhile, instead of coming to the office and going back without any work,” he said.
At that time, he had even written several letters to the Telangana Chief Secretary to complain about his predicament, but there had been no response.
A native of Kothagudem in Telangana and alumni of both NIT Warangal and JNTU Hyderabad, Murali is known for speaking his mind.
He had hit the headlines for his comments on ‘beef-eating’ while he was the district collector of Bhupalpally, after which he was shunted out. He also made comments against the State’s prestigious Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme. He said, “The money spent on Kaleshwaram could have been used for the development of schools.”
Murali to advise on school infra
As per the terms of appointment, Murali will report to the Principal Secretary, School Education. Besides the Principal Secretary, he will advise the Commission of School Education, SPD-SSA, the MD of APEWIDC, the CE of APEWIDC and other engineering departments who are entrusted with the responsibility of implementing school infrastructure programmes
After his voluntary retirement, Murali expressed interest in working in the improvement of schools and education. Speaking to TNIE on the appointment of Murali as the advisor, Budithi Rajashekar, Principal Secretary of School Education, said that it was the State government’s decision.
“There has to be a person to look after infrastructure development in schools, which will be given to the school committees and not to contractors. As the collector, Murali brought a community contracting system, wherein the works were given to committees rather than contractors and it was effective. It is a known fact that in any kind of civil works 40% of the commissions will be taken by local contractors. We want to avoid that and thus brought this system. Since he has experience in this field and he is free now, we have appointed him. There is no hidden agenda behind his appointment or his resignation in Telangana. An advisor can be anyone, only his experience and personal commitment to the work matter.”
As per the terms of appointment, Murali will report to the Principal Secretary, School Education, besides the Principal Secretary, he will advise Commission of School Education, SPD-SSA, the MD of APEWIDC, the CE of APEWIDC and other engineering departments who are entrusted with the responsibility of implementing school infrastructure programmes in the State involving communities, school management committees, especially in advising community contract methodology.
He will be responsible for ensuring setting up of the programme management unit for monitoring the overall infrastructure programme, providing a strong day-to-day leadership presence, overall programmatic leadership to the various interventions, innovations in the implementation, pilots etc related to school infrastructure.
He will also be responsible for ensuring convergence and coordination between various stakeholder departments and agencies, identifying mutual synergies and fostering partnerships between the CSE, SSA and APEWIDC and other national/international agencies towards furthering the project, designing and driving the key metrics, establishing a robust monitoring and evaluation framework.