"Near NaMo" Arrives — In Hyderabad, Not Delhi: What Telangana's AI Minister Must Do in Phase Two

Telangana has unveiled an AI avatar of IT Minister D Sridhar Babu at DevFest 2026 — India's first AI minister. Phase One was a stage demo; Phase Two, as declared, is citizen feedback and grievance intake. That second phase decides whether the twin is a channel or a shield. I set out four things to publish: a ticket for every grievance with a published disposal time and monthly counts, the avatar's knowledge base and refusal rules, signed provenance for the twin, and escalation of the template to Chief Minister and Prime Minister level.

At GDG Hyderabad's DevFest 2026 on Saturday, before more than 3,300 developers, Telangana put a serving minister's digital twin on stage. The Times of India called it "a pre-AGI avatar of IT and industries minister D Sridhar Babu" (24 Oct 2026); WION and Siasat reported that it answered Gen Z questions in English and Telugu, built on TensorGo's HumAIn platform under the guidance of Sai Krishna, the minister's IT adviser.

The news, though, sits in the second paragraph. Sai Krishna called the launch Phase One. Phase Two, the Times of India reports, is where citizens themselves will interact with the avatar, submit feedback and raise grievances.

That is a different job. For four years I have argued for an official avatar — not a deepfake, an authorised one — so that a leader can hold a genuine multi-lingual dialogue with crores of citizens at once. In May I wrote "From 'Dear Namo' to 'Near NaMo'" and closed on the real choice: let your own avatar speak, or let someone else's fake one speak in your name. A state has now done Phase One in public, in weeks. I would rather spend this post on Phase Two than on saying I said so.

A demo can be argued with. A grievance cannot be waved away. So here are four things Telangana should publish before citizens are invited in:

1. A ticket, not a chat. Every submission should get a unique ID, a category and a published disposal time, and the department should publish monthly counts of what citizens actually asked. In 2021 I welcomed the Defence Ministry's AI grievance app, built with IIT Kanpur for CPGRAMS (my post "Congratulations, Shri Rajnath Singhji"), because it could flag repeats and analyse complaints by category and geography. A twin that listens but never counts is a feedback form with a face.
2. Publish the knowledge base and the refusal behaviour — what is in scope, what the avatar will not answer, and what it does when it does not know. I would suggest an "answer, escalate, publish" rule: an unknown question goes to a human, and the gap shows up in the monthly log. Otherwise no citizen can tell "the minister has no answer" from "the system has no answer".
3. Guard the twin as an impersonation asset. A minister's authorised avatar in the wild is also a template for an unauthorised one. Phase Two needs signed provenance — cryptographic proof, attached to every clip the twin emits, that it came from the government's own system — and a public list of the only channels where it officially speaks.
4. Escalate the template to Chief Minister and Prime Minister level. That has been my standing ask, and Telangana has now supplied the missing evidence: a working state-level build, launched on a Saturday evening. It takes weeks, not years. The knowledge base at the top is bigger; the architecture is the same.

On Sunday KTR said AI should not be portrayed as a ghost, and pressed for Hyderabad as a global AI hub (Andhra Jyothy, 25 Oct 2026). He is right, and the warning applies to avatars too. A ghost is not only a scary thing; it is a thing that cannot be held to account. A twin that answers only what it was fed, and files nothing, is that ghost. A twin that issues tickets is a minister who is finally reachable.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
25 Oct 2026