Transcos officials fleece Telangana, AP farmers

Hyderabad: An analysis of Anti Corruption Bureau cases of the last two years from the Telugu states, particularly Telangana, found that TS Transco engineers demanded bribes from farmers for setting up transformers.

TS ACB officials said that in districts like Nalgonda, Mahbub-nagar, Nizamabad and Medak most of those arrested were TS Transco officials who were harassing farmers who wanted to set up transformers.

Transco assistant engineers and deputy engineers were caught red handed in 15 cases in both TS and AP this year while demanding bribes ranging from Rs 20,000 to Rs 1 lakh for setting up transformers. The setting up of transformers was delayed by around a year even after the farmers paid the charges.

An ACB DSP said, “Farmers who are already facing problems get troubled where Transco officials delay applications for three phase connections or setting up transformers. They pay huge amounts as bribes, and if left with no other option they approach us.”

On September 27 ACB officials trapped C. Gangadhar, the assistant divisional engineer of TS TRANSCO in Bheemgal in Nizamabad district, while accepting a bribe of Rs 25,000 for sanctioning a new 25 KV transformer. The ADE was arrested.

In March 2016 in Kurnool district, the AP Transco’s engineer in Gospadu, Mr Ramach-andrudu, was caught while accepting a bribe of Rs 1 lakh from farmers for a transformer connection. Similarly, in 2015 AE Kondal Reddy was arrested while accepting a bribe of Rs 25,000 from a farmer of Moula Ali in Hyderabad for a transformer.

In Nalgonda in 2015 AE Koteswara Rao of TS Transco was caught red handed while accepting a bribe of Rs 20,000 in a similar case. In another case Transco engineer M. Srinivas Rao of Gajulrega was caught accepting Rs 10,000 for a three phase connection.

In another case ACB officials arrested one Syed Mohammed, the TS Transco AE of Parigi in RR district, while accepting a bribe of Rs 16,000 from a farmer.
 for okaying a new transformer in April 2015.