People disgruntled as officials skip Prajavani for CM’s visit

Chittoor: The Prajavani programme at Chittoor Collectorate on Monday turned out to be an absolute fiasco with most officials staying away from the weekly event as they were busy attending on Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu who was in Tirupati.

Normally, the district collector personally receives the petitions at Prajavani and in his absence; the joint collectors preside over the proceedings.

But neither Collector Siddharth Jain nor joint collectors Girisha or Venkata Subba Reddy were present on Monday.

It was left to District Revenue Officer L Vijayachander to tide over the proceedings. The collector, joint collectors and majority of the officials were away in Tirupati as the Chief Minister had come to the region to participate in a slew of official programmes.

Unfortunately, people had come to the Collectorate from across the district well before 10 am to submit their grievances.

With the senior officials away, they were very frustrated and some of them even returned without lodging their grievances.

A group of farmers from Ramakuppam made a fervent appeal to the RDO to protect them from the elephant-menace in their region. The RDO promised to direct Forest Range Officer of Kuppam to take immediate action.

And then, there was a group of differently-abled people who requested pensions saying that they had made umpteen visits to the Collectorate to date, for the same.

Vijayachander said he had received 54 petitions and informed that all petitions had been forwarded to the concerned departments.

He admitted that many officials had abstained from the Prajavani programme despite the Collector issuing instructions to the contrary.