VELLORE: A day after Water Resources Minister Durai Murugan abruptly left a government function in Katpadi, his constituency, apparently annoyed that a power cut had interrupted his speech, two assistant engineers of the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO) were transferred on Tuesday.
Superintending Engineer of Vellore Distribution Circle Ramalingam said Chitti Babu and Ravi Kiran were transferred for “administrative reasons”. They was shifted to a sub-station in Vaduganthangal, 15km from Katpadi.
On Monday, the minister was attending a function to distribute bicycles to students at the Katpadi Girls Higher Secondary school. As he started his speech, the power went off. He waited for a few minutes, while Collector P Kumaravel Pandian, Anaicut MLA AP Nandakumar, and deputy mayor Sunil Kumar made frantic calls to electricity officials to have the power restored.
However, the exasperated minister eventually gave up, simply distributed the bicycles to a few students and left early. A video of the incident has gone viral on social media.M Govindaraj, regional secretary of the Central Organisation of Tamil Nadu Electricity Employees, a wing of CITU, said an accident had occurred but a transfer was not the solution.
“EB staff are not given prior information about such important events. Under such circumstances, there are chances for such untoward incidents to take place. Also, the department is short-staffed, which adds pressure on employees working under tight deadlines,” he said. “Our union is of the opinion that the Minister was not behind this decision. The DMK had objected to similar actions when taken by the previous (AIADMK) government,” he added.