Govt sacks 3, stops pension of 6 for graft, inefficiency

Bhubaneswar: Three employees have been removed from government service and the pension of six retired government servants has been stopped as the state continues its crack down on corruption and inefficiency. The latest development takes the number of employees to have faced similar action in Naveen Patnaik’s current term as chief minister to 197.Those facing action include Sibaram Biswal, a former executive engineer of rural water supply and sanitation (RWSS) in Cuttack. The government stopped his pension in the wake of a court convicting him in a corruption case in June. The government stopped gratuity and pension of a retired OAS officer, Gandaram Khamari, a former block development officer of Kalramunda block in Kalahandi district. He was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in November last year for corruption.Pension and gratuity of Krushna Chandra Goud, a former assistant agriculture officer of G Udaygiri block were stopped as well as that of Dasarathi Tripathy (a retired soil conservation officer), Anand Chandra Nayak (block level education department official in Udala of Mayurbhanj district) and Surendra Nath Pati, (a panchayat-level official in Chandpur, Nayagarh.Those sacked include Gokul Chandra Nayak, who was caught accepting bribe during his posting as assistant agriculture officer at Umerkote in Nabarangpur, besides Upendrabhanja Nayak, a junior engineer of RWSS in Sohela and Sushil Kumar Meher, a local fund auditor who had last worked in Sundargarh.