Hyderabad, February 07: Apparently alarmed over the wrong signal sent by their earlier meetings and media briefings, the IAS officers have decided to avoid going into a huddle again over the CBI investigations or the role of ministers in the Jagan illegal assets case or the OMC mining scam in the future.
Sources said that a majority of the babus are of the opinion that their earlier meetings had sent a wrong message that they were trying to shied their ‘corrupt’ colleagues. The IAS Officers Associ-ation had held two meetings over the weekend to protest the alleged witch-hunting of bureaucrats in the name of investigation.
The officers opine that while the intention of the meetings was to expose the CBI’s discrimination against the babus while leaving the minister’s untouched in the investigations into cases, the meetings led to an impression that they intended to support their arrested colleagues Y. Srilakshmi and B.P. Acharya. Besides, many senior IAS officers are peeved with the statements made by some of their colleagues during press conferences. The bureaucrats had described themselves as ‘small fish’ while stating that the CBI was ignoring the ‘big fish’, thereby implying that they had resorted to irregularities.
According to sources, some IAS officers have conveyed to the association that they would never attend such meetings in the future, if such was the ‘outcome’. The questions raised by some IAS officers during the press conferences such as “Are political leaders not taking bribes?”, “Is it only the IAS officers who are taking bribes?”, led to resentment among majority of the bureaucrats.
“What signals will such questions send? They have hurt our self-respect and esteem. They were against the spirit of resolutions that were adopted in the meetings,” said an officer. “We had a comprehensive debate on the attitude being shown by the CBI in investigating the high profile cases during the two meetings. However, the intention was not to support the arrested officers. The idea was to make our point clear that all should be treated equally before law, whether officers or ministers. Unfortunately, our colleagues who briefed the media after the meetings failed to convey this point. Instead, they referred to unwanted issues. It’s our mistake,” said a senior official.
–Agencies