Babus close to YSRCP scramble to exit AP

Vijayawada: Zero tolerance towards violation of rules by officials and cleansing the administration seem to be the top priority of the new government that would start governance from June 12.

The manner in which the TDP had been making quick moves to ensure that no official data was destroyed or removed from the computers has made some of the officials who allegedly “overacted” in the discharge of duties jittery.

Chief secretary K S Jawahar Reddy who is due to retire later this month has gone on leave. New CS would be appointed on Friday. Before that, he had sanctioned leave to several officials, some of whom were contemplating to go to US.

Suspecting that some efforts to destroy important files and data had taken place since the day of polling by certain key departments like CID and SIT as well as finance department, the TDP had urged the Governor to ensure that no file is moved out of Secretariat and that no data was destroyed. Following instructions by the Governor, police officials had not only disabled the ID login and passwords of the officials but also sealed the finance department, offices of CID and SIT.

As a result, those who were allegedly close to the previous YSRCP government and acted as per the dictates of the then chief minister are now shaky.

Similarly, finance secretary S S Rawat has also taken leave, citing ill health.

In a related development, several IPS officers attempted to meet Chandrababu Naidu. Former intelligence chief P S R Anjaneyulu and SIT chief Kolli Raghurami Reddy went to Naidu’s residence but they were stopped outside the gate as they had no appointment.

It is learnt that Naidu’s office informed the gate that they had no permission to meet Naidu. It may be mentioned here that it was Raghurami Reddy went to Nandyal at middle of the night and knocked on the bus in which the TDP chief was sleeping violating the SPG rules and later arrested him. These two officials were kept away from poll duties.

Another key official, CID chief Sanjay, faced a similar fate when he attempted to meet Naidu. Security personnel stopped his car at the gate of the TDP chief’s residence and denied him entry. Sanjay had not only registered cases against Chandrababu Naidu but even addressed several press conferences trying to establish that Naidu had committed a scam in skill development. His leave application to travel abroad was also cancelled post-election results.

Amidst these changeovers, former IPS officer and additional director general AB Venkateswara Rao, who was sidelined by the YSRCP government for five years, visited Naidu on Thursday morning. There is speculation that Venkateswara Rao may play a significant role in the new TDP government.

Additionally, senior IPS officer Balasubramaniam is expected to be appointed as the Intelligence chief. Similarly, senior IAS officers Sai Prasad, Girija Shankar and Siddharth Jain, who previously worked in the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), are likely to be back in CMO.