- He should be hired at least on contract basis
- More scams likely?
- Things can get worse, without immediation action
Former IAS officer Rajeshwar Tiwari played a key role in setting up Telangana State RERA and also ensured efficient functioning of the authority. The RERA office was established on the ground floor of the DTCP office in Masab tank. After his resignation, the operations of Telangana RERA got completely derailed. The State government gave additional charge to the then Principal Secretary for Commercial Taxes Somesh Kumar who was later appointed as the Chief Secretary of Telangana State.
Eventually, he became busy with with the official works and could not focus much on the RERA operations. This caused severe damage to the credibility and reputation of the State government, after the Sahithi group’s pre-launch scam saw the light. Eventually, the government arrested the company MD Boodati Lakshminarayana as a firefighting measures.
Although many think that the ED and CBI raids on builders and developers were part of the political tussle, the Sahithi group’s pre-launch scam was completely due to the negligence of the State government. The TS RERA did not address the issue at appropriate time even though it was aware of this issue well in advance. Even after all the victims came to the road and staged protests, the authorities remained irresponsive.
Further, the RERA had only issued notices and dusted off its hands, but no concrete action was taken to address the issue before it went beyond control. The main reason for this inaction, can be easily pin-pointed to lack of full-fledged chairman and other members of RERA. The State government can still take proactive measures and appoint a senior officer to head the RERA, to ensure that no more innocent buyers get cheated. The government should at least consider re-appointment of a retired but efficient Rajeshwar Tiwari on contract basis to oversee the RERA operations. Otherwise, there is a risk that the government will suffer a lot more damage to its reputation and credibility due to these pre-launch scams in future.
