BENGALURU: The State Government has issued an order suspending 18 officials, including three assistant commissioners of the enforcement wing of the state commercial tax department, on charges of corruption after a preliminary inquiry.
“As they were allegedly involved in collecting bribes, the action has been taken following the vigilance wing’s preliminary inquiry pending departmental inquiry against them”, confirmed C Shikha, commissioner of commercial taxes.
According to sources, following complaints by business persons, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had ordered a probe following which the action was initiated a week ago. This is the first time in recent times that so many officials were suspended at once, said sources.
Sources informed The New Indian Express that the officials who have been suspended are — SG Savitha, joint commissioner, commercial taxes, Mysuru; assistant commissioners V Uma Devi (Chikkaballapura), KG Srirangappa (Chitradurga) and BL Keshava Murthy (Madikeri), CTOs Nalinakumari and Gayathri NT (Mysuru), Jayaram S, Janardhan R, Appu Pujari AT (Bengaluru), CTIs CN Patil (Belagavi), Vasudev HS (Madikeri), Yoganand K (Mysuru), Rangaswamy R (Chitradurga), Vijaykumar J (Chitradurga), Shreedhar S Dinesh S and Umesh R (Bengaluru) and Dhanraj M K, first division assistant (Madikeri).