BENGALURU: Advocate General Uday Holla on Friday filed a detailed affidavit before the High Court on behalf of Chief Secretary TM Vijay Bhaskar explaining about the preliminary inquiry that was initiated against eight officials for allegedly sitting on a BBMP file on a new advertisement policy for 22 months.
The Chief Secretary has found prima facie a case of dereliction of duty and also lack of supervision by several staffers and officials. They are Senior Assistant K B Channakeshava, Under Secretaries N Narasimha Murthy (Incharge), Ekesh Babu, H N Prabhakar, Y Gopal (retired), Jagadish Reddy, Deputy Secretary Hidayatulla, Deputy Director Shalini, Senior Assistant K Nagesh, Section Officers L Nagesh and Shrinidhi and Section Officer K L Prasad for, lack of supervision. All are attached to the Directorate of Municipal Administration, Urban Development Department, the affidavit said.
The affidavit also informed the court that daily SMSs are now being sent to the additional chief secretaries/principal secretaries/secretaries about the number of letters that have not moved in seven days and the number of files that have not moved in 15 days.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice R Devdas said: “We would expect the assurance, as stated in this affidavit, to be maintained in its manner, spirit and effect. At present, we do not wish to say anything further in this regard...”.