Scrapping of the Reverse Tendering System and Special Enforcement Bureau, setting up of Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation and revamping of the Excise Department are some of the key decisions taken by Andhra Pradesh Cabinet.
The State government will now adopt the old and standard process of tenders which was in vogue during 2014-19, Kolusu Pardha Saradhi, Minister for I&PR told newspersons while briefing the decisions of the Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu in Amaravati on Wednesday.
EXCISE
The Cabinet decided to revamp the Excise Department to revert to the old structure of the Excise Department (which was more efficient and being followed in most States), Pardha Saradhi said.
“In the previous government, all national and international liquor brands were taken out of the market and existing distilleries were forcibly taken over to produce local brands by vested interests without any control on quality and price,’” the Minister said.
It led to increase in sale of illicit liquor and ganja which caused a public health hazard apart from resulting in the loss of about ₹18,000 to the State exchequer, he added.
Assigned lands
The Government has conducted a preliminary enquiry into the status of assigned lands in the State. “There are 36 lakh acres of assigned lands in the state out of which 29 lakh acres have already been inspected so far. There are suspected illegal transactions in 16.66 lakh acres of land. About 25,230 acres had registration transactions which are being looked into.,’‘ the Minister said.
The Cabinet decided to have a comprehensive report on the assigned lands by the end of September, he added.
“We have also discussed the Vision for Vikasit Andhra 2047 to make for the loss of thousands of crores due to anti-people policies of the previous YSRCP government,’‘ he said.
‘e-CABINET’
The Cabinet meeting was conducted in ‘e-Cabinet’ mode and did away with the use of paper. For implementation of the e-Cabinet application, I-pads were provided to the ministers. The e-Cabinet application is loaded and configured in the I-Pads. When Naidu was the chief minister during 2014-2019 also paperless cabinet meetings were conducted using another application. For today’s meeting a comprehensive application with multiple features end to end workflow was developed with the technical support of NIC, Delhi.