REPORTERS’ DIARY : Revanth’s stamp on CMO files

A former chief minister of combined Andhra Pradesh is notorious for his notation ‘not approved’ on almost all key files that reached his table. To avoid losing their files in the heap of such files on his desk, people concerned used to give him whatever he wanted so that the CM could simply add ‘e’ to the original notation for file movement. Thus, the file, with ‘not approved’ modified seamlessly as ‘note approved’, used to move with lightning speed. Likewise, other chief ministers had their own style of clearing files. ‘Yatha Raja tatha praja’; so, in government offices it is common to find dust-laden files kept pending for years, whatever the reason.  But TG Chief Minister Revanth Reddy seems determined to set a new trend. The files that reach his table are cleared in a maximum of two or three days. He either clears them or records his comments. People in the know of how CMO works say Revanth is unlike his immediate predecessor K Chandrasekhar Rao, who at one point of time had 12,000 pending files!  Revanth in fact has upped the ante so much that his ministerial colleagues and their respective teams are finding it hard to catch up with him. While a few are trying to match his speed, other seasoned leaders wink at the need for keeping pace with him. Several ministers are keeping their files pending, while prioritising some of them on the basis of whether the individual concerned is manavaadu.