Tech that: Majority collectors don't tweet, their handle idle

HYDERABAD: This is no imposter, D Krishna Bhaskar had to tell an inquisitive citizen, Bharath Reddy, on Monday. Reddy found the Rajanna Sircilla district collector on Twitter, and also active. "Sorry for asking this sir. Are you Krishna Bhaskar, IAS garu," Bharat Reddy tweeted, to which the collector responded with a smiley, saying he was no imposter in the twitter world.Reddy's astonishment was not without reason as majority collectors who were given twitter handles by the state government have not made themselves accessible to people on the micro-blogging site.
IT minister K T Rama Rao is active on Twitter and expected collectors to follow suit. Though some babus are savvy, most feel tech-disabled or fumble on communication skills.
And this includes Hyderabad district collector Rahul Bojja and Ranga Reddy district collector M Raghunandan.
Warangal urban collector Amrapali Kata is not that active on Twitter, but she took to the micro-blogging site to name and shame someone. On April 18, the collector tweeted a picture of a bus stop saying - Shaaaaaaaaaame!!!! Shikara academy defacing our freshly painted bus stop at Nakallagutta!
Several collectors have not made use of twitter at all and if they did, they gave a link to the district website. To mention a few, the collector of Yadadri, Anitha Ramachandran, collector of Kamareddy Dr N Satyanarayana, collector of Adilabad, Jyothi Budha Prakash, collector of Nizmabad district Yogita Rana, collector of Siddipet P Venkat Rama Reddy, and collector of Khammam, Lokesh Kumar, collector of Medak, Bharathi Hollkeri are among those who have not taken to Twitter as yet.
That the micro-blogging site can be used as a redressal mechanism may have been lost on most collectors, but a few of them like collector of Warangal (rural), Prashant J Patil, collector of Jagtial, Dr A Sharath, collector of Suryapet K Surendra Mohan, and collector of Sangareddy, Manikya Raj Kannan are actively promoting government programmes and are also accessible to the people. One of the most active collectors is Prashant Patil.
Responding to a civic issue raised by a citizen, collector of Adilabad, Dr N Satyanarayana said officials were identifying street vendors, providing alternative place for them and also preparing estimates for laying BT roads. He was responding to N Raksheeth, who sought to know when the road-widening works would start at Ashok Road, Adilabad, they were facing a lot of traffic problems.
When Ch Rajasekhar tweeted to IT and municipal administration minister K T Rama Rao about bad roads and lack of streetlights from Beeramguda Navyanagar to Ameenpur village, the minister retweeted this to the collector of Sangareddy, who was prompt in taking note. The collector of Medchal M V Reddy too responded immediately when KTR brought the issue to his notice.
A citizen, Srikanth Benoni, had tweeted to KTR that some widows who had applied for pension had been approaching officials for last 10 months, but that proved to be of no use. With KTR retweeting it to collector, Medchal collector M V Reddy, there was an immediate response. The collector gave his email id and asked Srikanth Benoni to send him details.