Hyderabad Exempted From Aug 19 Maha Survey?

Hyderabad and GHMC area has been exempted from the “Intensive Household Survey”, the maha survey that is scheduled to be conducted by the Telangana state government on August 19 across the state. Over 4 lakh state government staff members have been assigned for the maha survey duties on August 19. While this would be enough to cover the districts, they wont be enough to cover Hyderabad and GHMC area. So in GHMC area, a separate survey would be taken up on later date with required staff from all the departments. The survey dates will be finalised soon, according to Raymond Peter, principal secretary, panchayat raj department, who is monitoring the household survey process.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is expected to hold a meeting with officials next week to finalise the schedule for household survey under the GHMC limits and the survey methodology that needs to be adopted in Hyderabad and some parts of Ranga Reddy district under the GHMC. Here the conditions are different in comparison to the conditions in other districts. 

Reports say the survey sample will have 10 sub-sections on 70 parameters , seeking personal details of family members, including religion, caste, ration card, bank accounts, marital status to details about Aadhaar, pensions, ownership of houses, whether beneficiary of  government housing schemes etc, details about electricity connection, and  physically-challenged if any, even diseases and  agriculture details including livestock details and movable assets like vehicles, tractors and agri-related machinery. No nativity column is expected in the survey form. The survey will be more of a social and economic survey. The survey sample will be finalised by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao next week.

Since there is large-scale migration to Hyderabad from other states, the government feels that a different survey methodology has to be adopted here to identify locals and non-locals, who will be eligible for various welfare schemes to be extended by the state government.

It also plans on giving priority to Telangana locals in the scheme. The household survey holds the key, even for extending other benefits like fee reimbursement for the Telangana native students.

In the meeting convened with senior officials at the Secretariat here on Friday on household survey, the Chief Minister said that it requires a special exercise to take up survey in the GHMC area due to the presence of the huge population and a large number of households.

Update on 11 Aug, 2014: The idea of separate survey for Hyderabad has been withdrawn and the 19 Aug survey now has been extended to Hyderabad as well. So Hyderabad will have survey on the same day, like rest of the State.