IAS officers up in arms against Vijayasai

Amaravati: IAS officers in the state are up in arms against YSRC Rajya Sabha member V Vijayasai Reddy for his allegations against Special Chief Secretary in Chief Minister’s Office Satish Chandra and Intelligence chief AB Venkateswara Rao. Vijayasai had accused these two officers of acting like Telugu Desam workers in “purchasing” the YSRC MLAs ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections.

The YSRC general secretary made the allegations twice, once when he had submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission of India in New Delhi a few days ago seeking its intervention in prevention of the YSRC MLAs being lured by the TDP to tilt the balance of MLAs’ strength in the TDP’s favour and thus help it win all the three Rajya Sabha seats that are going to fall vacant soon.

He repeated his allegations again when he had visited Visakhapatnam a couple of days ago, triggering protests among the IAS officials.On Wednesday, AP IAS Officers Association secretary Shahsi Bushan Kumar issued a statement condemning the allegations made by Vijayasai. He said Satish Chandra has been rendering selfless service to the cause of the bifurcated state by building necessary environment to carry out administration from Amaravati.

Shahsi Bhushan said the threat of vindictive action against a civil servant was deplorable and the association appealed to all political parties to desist from such irresponsible behaviour in demoralizing the civil service.

Later Shashi Bhushan handed over the statement to the Chief Minister at the Cabinet meeting and reportedly expressed the indignation of the officers over the threats being made to the officers. According to sources, a decision is yet to be taken on the next course of action either by the association or the government.