IAS officer Smita Sabharwal, known as the 'People’s Officer' in Telangana for her extraordinary work in Chittoor, Warangal, Vizag and Karimnagar.

At the age of 23 years, Smita cracked the UPSC exam and became the youngest officer to take up responsibility as additional secretary at a chief minister’s office in Telangana. She is popularly called the “people’s officer” and known for the “Fund Your City” campaign in Warangal. The campaign appealed to residents to help her build infrastructure in Naxal-affected areas. She has closely worked for the improvement of the health and education department in the state.

As Municipal Commissioner of Warangal in united Andhra Pradesh, Sabharwal launched a “Fund Your City” scheme, asking residents to participate in building infrastructure in the Maoist hit area. This earned her great goodwill as she built parks, foot over-bridges and traffic junctions with a public-private partnership model.

Next stop was Karimnagar, a poor and backward region of Telangana where she was posted as District Collector in 2011. Sabharwal realised that healthcare and education was in the doldrums in the district. Only 9 percent of deliveries were happening at government hospitals. Sabharwal came up with what is called the 'Amma Lalana' (mother’s nurture) scheme whereby government hospitals were cleaned up, staffed and monitored and deliveries and maternal check ups made available free of cost to poor women. Awareness campaigns were conducted to bring more women into hospitals for institutional deliveries. At the same time, Sabharwal installed computers and internet facilities in all hospitals and primary health care centres and monitored them via Skype. Amma Lalana was a health initiative for poor women. Child birth is an unimaginable expenditure — they have to spend Rs 30,000-50,000 if they go to a private hospital. If we give good, clean facilities, people will want to come to government hospitals. That’s the motto of Amma Lalana. Childbirth should be a happy event, not a burden for extremely poor families. We improved sanitation, got good equipment and trained doctors. People responded to that positively. I am happy to say that now the entire state is adopting this model. 

Known for listening to the troubles of 200–300 needy people on a daily basis, it is only fitting that she be known as the people's officer.

In 2015, misogyny came to roost at Smita Sabharwal’s doorstep. As she set foot into the newly carved Telangana state Chief Minister’s Office as an additional secretary, the first woman officer to get the post in the new state