HYDERABAD: The suspended HMDA official, BV Krishna Kumar, who has been on leave for two months is purportedly on a vacation in the US. He has reportedly written a letter to the state government requesting to extend the leave by another two months.
On January 24, Krishna Kumar, who was the assistant planning officer (APO) of Shankarpally zone, departed for the US, which is a day before the arrest of former HMDA (town planning) director S Balakrishna by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in connection with an illegal assets case. The suspended APO had previously worked under Balakrishna.
“Since the last week of January, Krishna Kumar has not reported to work. Before his foreign tour, he applied for a two-month leave. Subsequently, he requested an additional two months’ of leave as his initial leave was set to expire in four days,” HMDA officials said.
ACB officials have been conducting investigations at the HMDA head office in Ameerpet since Thursday morning. They are scrutinising files approved by the suspended APO, discovering instances where Transferable Development Rights (TDR) certificates were issued without site inspections.
The accused officer was suspended by HMDA Metropolitan Commissioner M Dana Kishore on Wednesday following an internal probe carried out after many people lodged complaints a few months ago.
ACB officials suspect that Krishna Kumar colluded with reputed builders and real estate firm owners and caused losses to the tune of thousands of crores to the government through TDR.
The allegations against Krishna Kumar include favouritism towards builders and processing of files without following due procedure. He was suspended for approving files without verifying ownership documents or conducting site inspections.