Geo-tagged!

To have a place named after an officer is a very rare event. Rarer still is the chance of two places in two states officially named after an official. Asok Sagar in Nizamabad district in Telangana and Asok Nagar village in Vempalli mandal of Kadapa District of Andhra Pradesh is named after  Asok Kumar, who had worked as Collector here and made significant contributions to the district. Villagers in Chitvel Mandal of Kadapa district have named their housing colony as "Asok Nagar", making it the third geo-tagged area in the name of the official!

Asok Sagar is a 200-acre lake in Nizamabad district of Telangana, named after Asok Kumar the popular Collector of the district in the 2001-2003 period. This is 7 kilometers from Nizamabad city and en route the famous Saraswathi Temple at Basar. This has been developed as a Tourist destination with restaurant and boating facilities and an 18 feet statute of Saraswathi in the middle of the lake. Asok Sagar has featured in the official Tourism Calendar of Andhra Pradesh Tourism in 2003 and also was the official entry from the state government for the National Tourism Award under the eco-tourism category.  It attracts a huge crowd during holidays and festival days.

Asok Nagar, in Kadapa district, Andhra Pradesh is a new village settlement in Vemula Mandal in the Pulivendula, Assembly constituency segment that was represented by late Dr. Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy, the then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. The village was named Asok-Nagar in 2006 by the Chief Minister himself after the then Collector Asok Kumar, who had helped quick for the development of Kadapa district, during the tenure of YSR as CM of AP. The villagers here were the original inhabitants of "Bolegundi" village, a village atop a hill, 10 kilometers deep inside the forest area in Vemula Mandal. They were cut off from the outside world and faced immense difficulties in procuring their daily provisions and accessing health care facilities. On a stray remark by the CM Dr. Rajasehara Reddy during a conversation, about the plight of the people living there; (whom he said that he could not visit till then, though he had been their representative for the last 30 years as MLA or MP); Collector trekked up to the interior village and convinced them to resettle at the foothills. With the approval of the CM, a new colony was created for these people using the Pulivendula Area Development Agency (PADA) Funds under the CM's discretionary quota. Over 150 pucca houses were built, street lights and blacktopped roads laid, a school building, overhead water tank, etc were constructed, school started and lands/fruit-bearing lime orchards were purchased and given for livelihood of the re-settled families. Their land inside the forest, which at times used to be the hideout of Naxalites, was given to the forest department for compensatory afforestation, in lieu of the forest lands submerged under the new irrigation projects taken up elsewhere in the state. CM promised to develop it as a model village.

Inspired by Hon'ble CM naming this new village as Asok Nagar, after the Collector, a group of villagers in Chitvel Mandal of Rajampet subdivision, Kadapa district decided to name their new housing colony built for them under the Indira Awas Yojana (INDIRAMMA scheme in AP) as Asok Nagar.