The Jaganmohan Reddy Government in Andhra Pradesh is already facing allegations of increasing taxes, charges and fines on the general public. Now, the Government issued a curious GO making it mandatory for getting licenses for dogs and pigs in the State.

Henceforth, no dog or pig can roam the streets and lanes anywhere in the State without a license. No pet owner can take their dogs out without having this license. If caught without a license, the local officials would slap a fine of Rs. 500 fine on the violators. The GO was already issued by the panchayat raj department. The GO was issued by Principal Secretary Gopala Krishna Dwivedi.

What more, the Government said that it would collect Rs. 250 additional fine per day besides collecting the original penalty. When taking licenses, the owners should bring health fitness certificates for their pets from the veterinary officers concerned. Once the licenses expire, the owners should necessarily get new licenses within 10 days.

The panchayat raj department has issued orders to the villages to issue tokens to all those who are owning dogs and pigs. These token numbers should hang around the necks of pets all the time.

The administration in Andhra Pradesh’s Krishna district successfully completed the two-day dry run of Covid-19 vaccination on Tuesday.

A day after conducting various activities as part of the process, the state health authorities submitted a report on the dry run to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, listing the issues involved for necessary action

The feedback on the dry run was provided by the District Task Force and the State Task Force via video conferencing conducted by the Joint Secretary (Public Health) with officials of Andhra Pradesh and three other states where the process was conducted on Monday.

The feedback is expected to provide insights on any gaps or bottle-necks during actual conduct of vaccination.

The officials expressed satisfaction in terms of the operational approach and use of IT platform to ensure transparency and effective monitoring of vaccination processes. They made suggestions on improvements for Co-WIN, the IT platform for vaccination.

The dry run exercise was aimed at end-to-end testing of Covid-19 vaccination process and included planning and preparations as per the operational guidelines; creation of facilities and users on Co-WIN application, session site creation and mapping of sites, Health Care Workers (HCW) data upload, receipt of vaccines and vaccine allocation by the district, session planning, deployment of vaccination team, logistics mobilization at session site, mock drill of conducting vaccination and reporting and review meetings at block, districts and state level.

The objective of dry run was also to undertake and confirm field implementation of Co-WIN and guide way forward prior to actual implementation.

Earlier, District Collector A. Md. Imtiaz, who supervised the dry run, took feedback from field level officials and express his satisfaction over the successful conduct of the process.

The dry run was conducted under the supervision of the District Collector at five centres – GGH Vijayawada , Poorna heart hospital, Uppaluru Primary Health Centre (PHC), Penamalluru PHC and Prakash Nagar eUPHC.

Identified beneficiaries from among healthcare workers participated at each session site where the process was conducted as per the guidelines of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with all the Covid appropriate behaviour measures.

For each of the five session sites, 25 test beneficiaries were identified for the dry run. The test beneficiaries were present at the session sites for session site simulation. Officials said that 95 per cent of total beneficiaries attended the process.

The beneficiaries were sent dummy SMSes informing them about the time and place of Covid vaccination under a mock drill to administer the shots at designated centres.

At all the sites, the recipients were subjected to temperature check. Sanitation was done and physical distancing was maintained.

The dummy beneficiaries visited session site in two-hour time slot. Vaccinating Officer-1 matched beneficiary names from list while VO-2 verified beneficiary using Co-WIN application.

Dummy vaccination was given by VO-2, who also reported vaccination in the Co-WIN app. VO-3 and 4 managed crowd, IPC (Inter process Communication) messaging, support vaccinator.

The beneficiaries were briefed on the potential side-effects of the vaccine and what they have to monitor on the health front for the next three months.

The dummy beneficiaries waited for 30 minutes following vaccination. Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) treatment facility was also set up at each centre with 10 beds e by appointing a general medicine doctor as the in-charge.

“The process of creation of session site, allotting beneficiaries and allotting time slots as well as sending SMSes to beneficiaries worked well. Allocation of vaccine from store to session site also worked well,” said state Health Commissioner Katamaneni Bhaskar.

He also expressed satisfaction over the working of AEFI management

According to the District Collector, dummy vaccine was transported from the central storage facility to cold chain points at various places.

“We recorded this in the Co-WIN app and sent SMSes to the identified patients. We have monitored the time taken for different processes and the logistics involved. This will be used in real-time simulation,” he said.

The district administration is planning to use all primary health centres, hospitals, educational institutions and village secretariats as vaccination centres when the actual vaccination process is rolled out.

All along, the Jagan Reddy Government has been arguing in the High Court of Andhra Pradesh that the local body elections cannot be held in view of the Coronavirus vaccination in February. The State Election Commission, on its part, is saying that the Central Government has not yet approved any vaccine as yet. There is no schedule issued by the Union Health Ministry for taking up the vaccination programme as of now.

Now, in his latest arguments, SEC lawyer Aswini Kumar told the High Court that if the Central Government issues any guidelines for vaccination, then the Election Commission would stick to it. So, there should be no hurdle for the SEC to go ahead with its preparations for the February local body polls.

The Government lawyer continued his arguments asking the court to hear its case challenging the SEC decision to hold the polls in February.

The Judge commented that the issue has to be studied in depth since there is no clarity on when the vaccination schedule would be released by the Centre. He postponed the hearing in the case till after Sankranti holidays. The legal battles between the Jagan regime and SEC N. Ramesh Kumar are turning out to be more sensational than even the local body polls itself.

The Andhra Pradesh government set the ball rolling on Wednesday to crackdown on corporate intermediate colleges for criminally sitting on the certificates of the students, demanding fees.

On Wednesday, B. Rajsekhar, Principal Secretary, School Education Department, wrote to Director General of Police (DGP) Gautam Sawang to initiate action against such colleges.

“In this regard, the DGP, Vijayawada, has been requested to instruct the authorities concerned to initiate necessary action against the principals/managements of junior colleges who are withholding/possessing SSC (10th standard) certificates of students illegally and not issuing transfer certificates (TC),” wrote Rajsekhar.

The Principal Secretary highlighted that some junior college managements are not returning the students’ SSC certificates, intermediate pass certificates and TCs for want of tuition fees and other frivolous reasons.

“The complaints against college managements by the students include insisting for payment of additional amount, committed due amount and fees for online classes etc. for issuing the said certificates,” he said.

This unnecessary delay in procuring certificates is causing much heartburn among the students and their families as they are unable to go ahead with their preparations for higher studies.

“Many students who got admission in IITs have complained to me that the colleges are sitting on their certificates, impairing their future plans,” V. Ramakrishna, Secretary, Board of Intermediate Education (BIE), told IANS.

Rajsekhar reminded that the BIE had barred the colleges from withholding certificates in July itself as many college managements resort to this criminal activity regularly, terrorising students.

Already, the BIE has obviated the need for intermediate colleges to physically verify a student’s 10th standard certificate and other documents, a much abused procedure to gain complete domination over the students.

“In the name of verifying certificates, they (college managements) are holding back the certificates if they (students) don’t pay tuition fees and for other kinds of reasons,” Ramakrishna had said earlier.

In his appeal to the DGP, he also attached some complaints received from the students and their parents for reference.

The Andhra Pradesh government is reforming the two-year intermediate course subjected to decades of free-for-all exploitation, abuse and commercial enterprise.

In a state like Andhra Pradesh, where an average family places a high premium on education at any cost, some enterprising individuals smelled a business opportunity and started intermediate colleges in the past four decades, which grew into formidable corporate players in the due course of time.

Over the years, several junior colleges erected makeshift sheds without libraries, playgrounds, proper facilities and crammed the students to call them intermediate colleges.

It is exactly this abuse of the system which Ramakrishna is aiming to shatter for the good of lakhs of students.

Introducing online admissions, obviating the need for a principal to endorse examination hall tickets, displaying 25 pictures of colleges on the BIE website, abolishing mind-numbing advertisements are some of the much-needed reforms that have been initiated.

Asbestos sheds as classrooms, premises sans fire safety certificates, admission hunting, compelling teaching staff to market colleges, overcrowded classrooms and other transgressions will be a thing of the past if the government manages to succeed with its reforms.

From kindergarten to post-graduate courses, education in the southern state is highly commercialised, flouting several rules along the way.

Andhra Pradesh government on Tuesday disbursed Rs 1,252 crore to 9.48 lakh eligible farmers under insurance claims pertaining to the 2019 season as part of Dr. YSR Free Crop Insurance Scheme.

Rythu Bharosa Kendras (RBKs) will display the list of beneficiaries for transparency.

According to the state government, crop insurance scheme has been revamped to cover more farmers and now stands with the largest number of farmers and maximum acreage under Dr. YSR Free Crop Insurance scheme for 2019-20.

According to an official statement, the insurance scheme was one of the promises made by Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy during his 3,649 km long praja sankalpa yatra (marathon walkathon).

It was implemented as soon as Reddy became the CM.

“We have always been a pro-farmer state and the schemes that we have implemented benefitting the farmers for the last 18 months set the best example as to how the Government took care of the farmers in the state,” said Reddy.

He said the claims under Kharif 2020 crop insurance will be paid in March/April 2021, after the harvest in January and February.

Meanwhile, the statement said that the government cleared crop insurance premium amounting to Rs 123 crore for 2018-19 Rabi season, which was allegedly leftover by the erstwhile Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government.

“Crop insurance claims for that season were paid in June this year. A total of Rs 596 crore was also paid to 5.94 lakh farmers. For Kharif 2019, the state government had paid the farmer’s share of Rs 468 crore and its share of Rs 503 crore to the insurance companies,” said the statement.

Only two days back, CPI National Secretary K. Narayana had alleged that the Jaganmohan Reddy regime was lobbying hard in Delhi for changing the Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh. Now, it is becoming almost true. Indications were coming that AP Chief Justice JK Maheswari is being transferred to Sikkim.

Justice Aroop Kumar Goswami, who is currently the Chief Justice of Sikkim, may be appointed as the AP Chief Justice. The Supreme Court Collegium comprising five judges is stated to have taken a decision to this effect. These transfers are being affected all over the country.

Even Telangana Chief Justice RS Chouhan is also being transferred. Over five to six Chief Justices of different states were being moved as part of this.

It may be recalled that CM Jaganmohan Reddy was thoroughly upset with the manner in which most of his Government’s decisions were being stayed or dismissed by the AP High Court. Chief Justice Maheswari has passed critical comments on the functioning of the YCP Government several times. CM Jagan even complained to the Supreme Court Chief Justice against the AP High Court.