BENGALURU: Seniors KAS officer K Mathai pedalled to office on Wednesday morning as a mark of protest against his seniors in the e-governance wing of the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms. He alleged that he was being harassed by the seniors and there has been a conspiracy to close the Sakala Mission. Mathai, the Assistant Commissioner and Administrative Officer of Sakala Mission, rode on the bicycle for more than 30 km from his residence at Provident Welworth City in Marasandra near Rajanakunte off Doddaballapur Road.
He left home around 8.15 am and reached M S Building near Vidhana Soudha, where his office is located, around 10.15 am. Wearing safety gear and hauling his bicycle to his office, Mathai told Express that he pedalled to work because the bills for his office vehicle had not been paid for 11 months. “This has been done purposely to harass me. The agency has cancelled the vehicle allotted to me as the bill was not paid. So I decided to come on bicycle from Wednesday. This is the only Saathvik option left for me to protest,” he said. “I had written to the Additional Chief Secretary (DPAR) Rajeev Chawla narrating my problem of not having official vehicle. I even urged him for providing security for my bicycle while parked in the parking lot of M S Building. But there was no reply. So I took my bicycle to my chamber.
What if someone steals my cycle?’’ he said. Mathai also had slung two placards on his bicycle. The one in the front urged people to apply under Sakala at the counter while the one on the rear mentioned the contact number of Sakala office in case of any complaint. Mathai has also sent a detailed report to Chief Secretary S C Khuntia where he has highlighted an alleged conspiracy of a section of senior IAS officers to shut down the Sakala Mission. Under the Sakala scheme, government offices are supposed to provide services with a time frame. “Over the past months, I have given 14 reports to the chief secretary, two of them related to Sakala,’’ he said.
In May, Mathai had filed a complaint with the Lokayukta against senior IAS officers, including former BBMP Commissioner M Lakshminarayana, accusing them of harassing him. Claiming that the harassment was vendetta for naming Lakshminarayana in the BBMP hoarding scam, he alleged that the latter is pressuring other senior officers to withhold his promotion and increments. Mathai had in his earlier postings, unearthed the multi-crore scam in allotment of sites by the Mandya Urban Development Authority and the advertisement hoarding scam in BBMP. He has been transferred 27 times in the last nine years.