Hyderabad: After two days of torrential rainfall, the city is now busy cleaning up the muck and filth huge flooding by rainwater has brought to its doorsteps. Over the last two days, humungous amounts of silt, mud and construction debris, which were dumped earlier on to roadsides, have made its way over onto to the middle of the roads.
A senior official from the sanitation department said that most of the waste that was cleaned up was mud and sand that swept up to the roadsides. He said that the rainwater could have brought the mud along with it.
Making matters worse was the fact they were plastic bags and cups clogging up the drains of the Panjagutta flyover, which made way for the creation of an impromptu swimming pool of sorts, not that any Hyderabadi would be too eager to swim in rainwater accumulated on a road.
“Workers of the monsoon teams cleared the Panjagutta flyover. There is no water on the flyover now. But on inquiry, we learnt that a lot of the water was stopped from entering the vents due to plastic and paper waste,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Met department said the city would continue to witness sparse amounts of rainfall for the next 24 hours.
Subsequently, the investigating agency recommended the initiation of disciplinary action against errant officials to principal secretary, labour employment training and factories department.
The V&E, in its final report, a copy of which your newspaper has procured, said, “it has been observed that certain drugs were procured from non-RC firms at high rates when compared to RC firm. The officials have deliberately split indents to below Rs 5 lakh, the official limit to avoid limited tender, and then went for local purchases in violation of G.O No. 489 of Finance).”
The report further said. “Devika Rani and five other top officers are not convincing in their responses. It was found that no e-procurement system of purchase of medicines was followed up to 2018, most of the drugs were purchased locally by accepting quotations without forming a local purchases committee and obtaining certificates, which is mandatory “.
Based on this preliminary report, the government had ordered the ACB to further probe the matter in detail. After 45 days of investigation, the ACB on September 26 carried out searches at 23 locations, including houses of 17 government employees. Those whose houses were searched include Devika Rani, Dr. K. Padma, joint director, Warangal, Dr. K. Vasantha Indira, assistant director, stores, M. Radhika, pharmacist, Ms. Um Fatima, pharmacist (grade II) and other supporting staff, besides four private persons.
Director of IMS, Devika Rani has been on the radar of ACB for a long time. Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, the investigation officer said, “The searches will continue, but no arrest has been made so far.”
