Smear campaign on, I'm untarnished: Ratna Prabha

Bengaluru: Even as Chief Secretary Arvind Jadhav is battling allegations of land grab by his family, Additional Chief Secretary, K.S. Ratna Prabha,  is now in the line of fire over the granting of land to Indu Tech Zone allegedly at a throwaway price some years ago. When contacted, Ms Ratna Prabha recalled that both the high court and Supreme Court had cleared her of the charges made by the CBI  and claimed the issue was being raked up merely to stop her from succeeding Mr Jadhav as Chief Secretary. “I have emerged clean from this. This is only an attempt to stop me from occupying the top job,” she said.     

Conspiracy afoot to tarnish top babus?
Highly placed sources also claim that desperate attempts are being made to stop Ms Prabha from  becoming Chief Secretary to protect the interests of a few individuals. “Over the last 10 years there have been a lot of wrongdoings  by the bureaucracy.  This is an attempt to cover tracks,” claimed one officer.

If sources are to be believed the  war in babudom could get uglier with vested interests out to  wash dirty linen in public for their own reasons. All of it is orchestrated from Delhi, they claim.

“There is a pattern now. While there is no denying that many of these reports are explosive and cannot be dismissed as baseless, the fact is the pandora's box is open and more dirt could be dished out in public.  This is the second time the syndicate is at play. The first time was in December when the Chief Secretary's post fell vacant after Kaushik Mukherjee left.

The top contenders to replace  him were  V Umesh, S K Pattanayak and Prabha, but Arvind Jadhav emerged the winner with the  heavy lobbying of the Lingayat community for Umesh  proving counter- productive.  And now  that Ratna Prabha is next in line for the Chief Secretary's post, a letter was shot off from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Delhi, on December 12 to  Karnataka and  Telangana raking up the charges against her in the Indu Tech Zone land scam,'' said an officer. Claiming that although the “clique” involved went  quiet for several months after Mr Jadhav sought  an extension,  sources say it got active again when he sought a second extension for his term scheduled to end on September 3.

“The transfer of  Manish Moudgal came in handy, and one thing led to another.  While a report by the revenue secretary is allowing Jadhav to cling to his chair, now that he has been maligned, he will not get an extension,” they noted.