IF Bureau
The Naveen Patnaik administration has sent a message loud and clear once again: Dishonesty and ineptitude among public servants will not be spared.
Nine government officials have been compulsorily retired by the Odisha government today on grounds of corruption and inefficiency.
Among them, seven faced the axe on charges of graft and the other two shown the door for lousy discharge of their duties.
As part of the Mo Sarkar initiative under the 5T model of governance, those found responsible are not just sacked but also named and consequently shamed along the way – just so an example is made of them as well.
The nine sacked officials of varied seniority levels are from the departments of forest, health, labour and mines.
One forest department official, one assistant engineer and two mines department officials were prematurely retired today, and the remaining five had already got the boot a few days earlier.
The two mines department officials are: Madan Mohan Biswal, Deputy Director of Mines, against whom nine vigilance cases have been registered on grounds of disproportionate assets; and Ramesh Chandra Mahalik, a Group-A officer, who faces four vigilance cases based on similar charges.
The three axed from the forest department are: Lakhman Kumar Pradhan, Assistant Conservator Forest (ACF) and Forest Range Officers Prashant Kumar Nayak and Bharat Kumar Ghadei. Pradhan faces two vigilance cases, Ghadei has three corruption cases registered against him, while Nayak is accused of disproportionate assets (DA), having failed to account for Rs 1.40 crore – a sum far bigger than is possible with his known sources of income.
Assistant Engineer Narayan Pradhan was fired after the vigilance got on his case for unaccounted wealth in forms of land and real estate, worth Rs 2.20 crore, in the districts of Deogarh, Sambalpur, Angul and Khordha.
Rayagada district labour officer Pradeep Kumar Bhoi was also sent off on compulsory retirement on corruption charges.
The two officers who were let go of for inefficiency were Joint Labour Commissioner Sharat Kumar Choudhury and Divisional Labour Commissioner Namita Das.
Including the nine today, the count of officials that the Government of Odisha has compulsorily retired on charges of corruption and inefficiency has reached 113.
The five-time Chief Minister has had a zero-tolerance policy for corruption since a long time ago, but if the past few years are any indication, he has been cracking down on graft with increasing frequency and intensity.
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