Govt to recover ‘booty’ from guilty officials

Kurnool: The state government has ordered recovery of over Rs 12 lakh from officials who committed large-scale irregularities in the Rs-1 crore rehabilitation project for 100 Scheduled Caste families.
The houses of the Scheduled Castes were set on fire by upper caste people in Vempenta village of Pamulapadu mandal of the district in 1988. The villagers also ransacked 50 houses before burning eight SCs alive.This was in retaliation to the killing of a former sarpanch B Sivaiah by naxalites of the People’s War. The village SCs have been accused of helping the naxalites.
The district administration had released Rs 1 crore for the rehabilitation of SCs and handed over the project to the SC Corporation.
The Corporation’s engineering wing took up the works of construction and repair of the houses and roads in the SC colony. The poor quality of work exposed the irregularities committed by the engineering officials and the government ordered an inquiry into the constructions in 2000. Panchayat raj executive engineer Narasimhachari inquired and submitted his report to the government.
Subsequently, the social welfare chief engineer ordered the recovery of Rs 6.03 lakh from one of the main accused in the misappropriation case, assistant engineer Bala Jojappa.
As Jojappa claimed that he did not have money to pay, the government asked the department to deduct Rs 3,000 every month from his salary.
Meanwhile, in the second phase of inquiry, the chief engineer issued orders for the recovery of Rs 6.33 lakh from executive engineer C J Simon, deputy executive engineer K N Murthy and assistant engineer M Bala Jojappa.
Each of them will have to pay Rs 2.11 lakh within 30 days.With this, Bala Jojappa has to pay Rs 8.14 lakh to the government.