Warangal: Jayashankar Bhupalapalli district collector Akunuri Murali has entangled himself in yet another controversy. This time, he abused the Mandal Parishad Development Officers calling them good for nothing and lazy during a video conference. Feeling insulted by his comments, as many as 50 mandal parishad development officers (MPDOs) have gone on mass leave on Thursday across erstwhile Warangal district to protest against the collectors’ remarks. “The collector, with his behaviour, is subjecting us to severe mental torture. We are losing respect among our subordinate staff because of his attitude, which is also derogating the government as well as common public,” the leaders complained in a memorandum submitted to the Deputy Chief Minister K. Srihari, ZP chairperson G. Padma and CEO S. Vijayagopal.
Warangal district MPDOs association president M. Srinivas Rao strongly condemned the comments of Mr Murali. He demanded that the collector convene a meeting with the association leaders and withdraw his comments. “We have presented the same before the deputy chief minister, who has assured us that he would speak to the collector and resolve the issue. We will declare our future plan of action depending on the collector’s response,” Mr Srinivas Rao said. The association has also demanded the collector to revoke the suspension of an MPDO P. Sreedhara Swamy, who was placed under suspension in view of his failure to attend video conference on Tuesday evening on ODF works and for not being available on phone.
The suspended official said he had no information about the video-conference and had gone to a village to visit the family members of a relative who passed away recently only after working hours. Since there was no signal at the village he could not be reached over his mobile phone, he clarified. Previously, Mr Murali has raked up a huge controversy when he said it is ok to eat the meat of Wild Boars. He also made comments against the Brahmanical culture. While conducting awareness programme against the eradication of gudumba the collector made the people promise in the name of Chief Minister KCR raising the eyebrows of the people.
