TELANGANA

The rulingTRSis planning to implement its poll promise of extending 3 lakh financial assistance for construction of own houses to people who own relatively small parcels of land. The plan is to implement the welfare scheme state-wide early next year. Officials are also working on rules and guidelines for implementation of the scheme.

TRS had promised financial assistance as construction of 2-BHK units was getting delayed and the number of people seeking housing was far more than the units being constructed.

The Centre may have decreasedpetrolprices, but the twin states ofAndhra PradeshandTelanganastill stand third and fourth in the country with higher costs per litre because of existing VAT.

There are several other states in the country where price of petrol is still higher than Rs 105. Despite state and central government price cuts, Rajasthan has the highest per litre fuel price in the country at Rs 111.10. The desert state is followed by Maharashtra (Rs 109.98), Andhra Pradesh (Rs 109.05), and Telangana (Rs 108.20).

Apart from these states, the price of petrol in Madhya Pradesh (Rs 107.23), Kerala (Rs 106.36), Bihar (Rs 105.90), and Punjab (Rs 105.02) are higher than Rs 105 per litre.
After the Centre dropped prices, all states and union territories, regardless of their cuts, saw a decrease in price ranging from Rs 6 to Rs 17. Petrol rates in Telangana reduced by Rs 6.29 and in Andhra Pradesh by Rs 6.10.

Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala have not reduced their state VAT on petrol prices.

Despite earning a record income of around Rs 62,000 crore in the first six months of this fiscal, theTelanganagovernment has proposed a new loan calendar schedule of Rs 8,578 crore for three months (October, November, and December) due tofund crunch.

The state finance department has submitted this schedule to theReserve Bank Of India(RBI) and hopes to raise Rs 3,500 crore in in October, one of the highest for any month.

This is cause for concern given that the State Government is feeling the pinch of the Union Government‘s loan calendar cuts, which total around Rs 8,814 crore this fiscal year, said sources. In the next two months along with October, bonds will be raised once every two weeks. The total amount of bonds to be raised in November will be Rs 3,000 crore and Rs 2,078 crore in December.

The state has proposed raising Rs 53,000 crore as bonds in the budget document (2022-23), but only managed to raise Rs 19,500 crore so far. The Union finance department was strict with the state governments at the start of this fiscal year, stating that off-budget borrowings (loans taken as bank guarantees given to state-owned corporations by the state governments) will be considered as part of theFiscal Responsibility Budget Management(FRBM) rules to be adhered to by the states. According to these rules, states have to limit the total loan burden to 3% of GDP.

Telanganahas rejectedNational Green Tribunal(NGT)-appointed joint committee findings on the Palamuru-Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Scheme (PRLIS).

The joint committee, in its report, had recommended environmental compensation of Rs 3.7 crore to be paid to Central Pollution Control Board towards violation of environmental norms, for constructing the project without environmental clearance (EC). was also directed to adhere to solid Waste Management rules and obtain EC.

The committee opined that the drinking water was a minor component, whereas it was conceived as an irrigation scheme to lift 90 thousand million cubic feet (TMC ft) and the drinking water component was only 7.15 TMC.

PRLIS is originally conceived for dual purpose, including providing drinking water toMahabubnagar,Nagarkurnool, Narayanpet, Vikarabad, Nalgonda,Rangareddyand Hyderabad city and the proposed project also serves the supply of water to industries.
The Telangana government also stated that the irrigation part of the project would be taken up only after getting EC and it was at the state of public hearing and submission of proposal for EC.

Several higher educational institutions from slipped in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2021rankings, released virtually by the union minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday. Only seven engineering institutions from Telangana figured in the top 200 compared to 11 in last years rankings. The figure stood at 16 in 2019.

In a first, the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IIT-H) secured 15th rank in the research category, while improving its overall ranking to 16th from last years 17th rank. In the engineering category, the IIT-H retained its eighth position for the third consecutive year.

The University of Hyderabad (UoH) ranked 25th in the research category. However, in the overall rankings, the university slipped from 15th to 17th rank this year. In the universitys category, the varsity, which was granted the Institution of Eminence tag two years back by the ministry of education, has slipped from the sixth to ninth rank.

Auctions for the next two years will be held in October this year, and the excise department is currently working on a newpolicy.

The excise department intends to develop a new policy by the end of next month. More than 80 new bars were permitted after the formation of the state, but none of them opened for various reasons.

As the number of licenses for liquor shops have remained constant since the states inception, officials are proposing a change this time by adding licenses for 200 more stores.
These shops will primarily be located in new mandals, municipalities, and areas, where more melas and festivities are held on a regular basis.

A new study by researchers from severalIndian Institutes of Technology(IITs), including Hyderabad, and other organisations has revealed energy consumption discrepancies in the Indian brick . They have analysed energy conservation in brick production.Telanganaproduces 3% andAndhra Pradesh4% of Indias bricks. The study, Reconciliation of Energy Use Disparities in Brick Production in India, has been published in Nature.

Highlighting the significance of energy conservation in achieving carbon neutrality in the building sector, the study shows that current energy consumption estimates in the brick industry were vastly underestimated, comparable to that of steel and cement industries. Researchers, including Azharuddin Hashmi and Asif Qureshi from IIT-H, had modelled Indian brick production and regional energy consumption by combining a nationwide questionnaire survey and remote sensing data on kiln enumeration.

States in the west and east are responsible for 10% and 8% production (of bricks). The contributions from the north and North-East are meagre. This implies that the operational practices in the Indo-Gangetic plain and the peninsula have the largest influence on national energy consumption.

The EMPLOYMENT in the IT/ITeS sector has increased by 8% in 2020-21… Every new direct job created in the IT sector leads to the creation of 2.5 new indirect jobs, said IT and industries minister KT Rama Rao.

KTR pointed out that when Telangana was formed, there were 3.23 lakh people working in the IT and ITeS sector and over 3 lakh new jobs have been added in the last seven years, taking the total employment created by the sector to 6.28 lakh.

With a huge demand for land for setting up new industries in the state, especially in Hyderabad Metropolitan Region (HMR), and land acquisition turning out to be a major problem, the government has decided to resume unutilised government land from various industries and institutions.

Sources in the government said about 1,800 acres of such unutilised land, which was allotted between 2004 and 2014, has been identified and notices slapped on the managements. Sources said some of them have already approached the courts on being served notices.

Officials said over 2,000 acres of land was allotted to various industries especially in the erstwhile Rangareddy district such as Raviryala,Maheshwaram,Ibrahimpatnam, Serilingampally and Shamirpet areas for setting up industries. The land extent was between 10 acres and 250 acres. While some have closed down their operations due to various reasons, some have utilised only a small portion of the land.

TheTelangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation(TSIIC) is the nodal agency for developing new industrial parks and allot the land to the new industries. Currently,TSIIChas a land bank of 1.50 lakh acres. Since the government is focusing on development of sector-wise industrial parks like Food Processing, automotive, aerospace and DEFENCE, textile and leather, and Industrial Policies of the government, there is a huge demand for the land. In the past nine years, land allotments were made to 2,980 units across the state.

With the rapid increase of Covid-19 cases, labour departmenthas turned its attention to condition of registered workers and workers of theunorganised sectorin Telangana.

According to official records, there are over 1.20 lakh registered workers in construction sector and another 95 lakh workers in unorganised sectors such asindustriesincluding major, medium and minor, and other mini hand-made manufacturing units in Telangana. Themigrant workers share in both sectors is more than 60%.

Recently, the Labour Department also constitutedTelanganaState Social Security Board for Unorganised Workers (TSSSBUW) to register all the workers of unorganised sector.