Revanth: End Beneficiary in Tapping Case Will Face Music
HYDERABAD: Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Saturday said that the law was clear that the motive behind any crime and the ultimate benefit accrued from it were of paramount importance while fixing responsibility and awarding punishment. He was reacting to a question on former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s alleged role in the phone-tapping case.
In an informal chat with mediapersons the Chief Minister categorically said all the accused in the illegal sanction of building permissions in the city would be brought to book. Asked about the Anti Corruption Bureau not summoning senior bureaucrat Arvind Kumar even for questioning after HMDA official S. Balakrishna, arrested for illegal assets, confessed to having paid the former crores of rupees in cash, Revanth Reddy said, “No one found to have done wrong will be spared. If not today (the corrupt will be punished) tomorrow.”
On the Kaleshwaram irregularities, the Chief Minister clarified that the judicial probe would be restricted to alleged irregularities in construction of the Medigadda, Sundilla and Annaram barrages. Asked about keeping the Kaleshwaram pump house component executed by Megha Engineering Infrastructure Limited away from the probe despite the CAG establishing that the project cost had been jacked up, Revanth Reddy said the government would first examine the Public Accounts Committee findings on the CAG report. “There is no hurry. I have got five years,” he pointed out.
Revanth Reddy made it clear that he was unaware of the details of the tapping case as he did not hold any review due to the poll code and that he would not want to comment based on media reports. “I have been saying time and again that the previous BRS regime resorted to phone tapping not to monitor any ISI or terror activities but to marginalise its political rivals,” he said.
When Chandrashekar Rao distanced himself from the phone-tapping scam, maintaining that it was in the purview of the intelligence department, the Chief Minister said the former was right on procedure but the fact that he was the ultimate beneficiary of the crime could not be ignored.
On the BJP’s demand for a CBI probe, Revanth Reddy shot back that Union minister G. Kishan Reddy had not taken action when he was Union minister of state for home, despite openly accusing the Rao government of tapping his phones.
The Chief Minister said in an unprecedented manner the state agencies, the ACB, Vigilance and Enforcement, Food Safety Authority and the police, had been going against the corrupt and wrong-doers. “All these years, these agencies were put to hibernation by KCR to allow his family members to earn thousands of crores of rupees. I gave these agencies freedom to pursue their job,” Revanth Reddy said.