On a foggy Friday morning, there is a long queue of people on the road outside the once-barricaded and heavily guarded Jyotiba Phule Praja Bhavan — the Telangana CM’s official residence — in Hyderabad. In the not-so-distant past, citizens were not allowed to even stand for a few minutes in front of the imposing building on Begumpet road in the State capital. The CM camp office was seen as a symbolic barrier, creating a sense of detachment between the citizens and their government.
However, on December 8, the new Congress-led government, opened the gates to citizens, via Praja Vani, a weekly public grievance redressal programme that had never been conducted at a Chief Ministerial level in Telangana. A. Revanth Reddy spoke to people at his official residence the day after he took oath as Telangana Chief Minister. Some in the serpentine queue had turned up as early as 5 a.m. on the first day.
Present at the venue was Appa Rao, a differently-abled man from Jawahar Nagar locality, patiently waiting in his detachable motorised wheelchair. In the past decade, he says, he must have been shooed away from the main gate of the CM camp office at least half a dozen times.
