The ongoing raids against constructors in Telangana state has been leaving some senior babus in jitters. Amidst rumours that the income-tax sleuths were shocked after unearthing large amounts parked by a few officers with a number of realty firms, the fraternity is busy with name-guessing. A little birdie says the I-T officials were indeed looking for payoffs made by the companies to the politicos but chanced upon incriminating evidence of parking of funds by half-a-dozen IAS officers, two IPS officials, a defence estate service officer, former IRS and Central excise officials. While the corrupt babus are tense, those with clean records are busy cracking jokes at the expense of their fellow officers. “The blessing in disguise for the firms raided by the I-T is that no official could open their mouth even if these firms avoided returning the investments, claiming that the money is taken away,” quipped a senior official.
VIJAYASAI REJOICES AT SONIA-RAGA DOWNFALL
After the bringing down of the “twin towers of corruption” in Noida the other day, another set of twin towers is all set to come crashing down, or that is what YSRC MP V. Vijayasai Reddy appears to believe. Vijayasai is busy targeting Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi for their plight in the party, calling it karma catching up with them for what they did to him and his boss Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy by launching CBI investigations and sending them to prison. Calling the Bharat Jodo Yatra a last gasp effort of the Congress, he now says the twin towers in the Congress are set to turn into debris in 2024.
POLITICAL U-TURNS NORMAL FOR NAIDU
Scramble mode — that is what many senior TD leaders in AP find themselves in currently after their party president N. Chandrababu Naidu suddenly flipped his long-standing opposition to what he once termed as “pappu bellalu”, sops which he had always maintained that AP Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy was giving the people. Naidu’s reference to commonly available sweetmeats as sops was the guiding spirit for his party leaders but, the other day, all that changed. Naidu suddenly appears to have developed a taste for these very pappu-bellalu he was once bitterly opposed to, or sounded as if he was. After having bitterly opposed various schemes of the YSRC government as wasting public money, Naidu promised that if voted to power he would implement more welfare measures. This left his party leaders perplexed, but with no option but to follow their leader. Recalling the U-turns of Naidu on various occasions, they are redrafting their ready-to-read statements to support sops, proving that for politicians, there is no such thing as a bitter pill.
MUNUGODE BYPOLL FORCES BHAGWAT OUT
Talk about an unintended fallout! Senior IPS officer Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagwat recently completed six years as commissioner of the Rachakonda police, after taking over the position as the first chief of the commissionerate in 2016. Though it is unusual for IAS and IPS officers to continue in the same post for long, in Telangana this has become a common phenomenon. Although Hyderabad police commissioner Anjani Kumar and Cyberabad police commissioner V.C. Sajjanar were transferred earlier, the government did not touch Bhagwat. But the upcoming Munugode Assembly bypoll may force the state government to transfer Bhagwat, as according to the Election Commission norms, officials working for more than three years in the same location should be transferred. Choutuppal and Narayanpur mandals in Munugode constituency fall under the Rachakonda commissionerate and the government has to comply with this norm by transferring Bhagwat.
