J B Patnaik takes exception to CM's action

Bhubaneswar, May 19 (UNI) Senior Congress leader J B Patnaik today described the action of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on five tainted officers as ''foolish'' and alleged that it will create a bad precedent in the state administration.

Talking to newspersons, the former Chief Minister said the state government has stripped off work from two IAS officers and three IFS officers and posted them as ''officers without duty'' for being chargsheeted by the Vigilance Department.

He said the action of the Chief Minister was nothing but simply an eyewash and wanted to know under what law and rules of the service code such action was initiated against the corrupt officers.

Mr Patnaik said the action of the Chief Minister was a historic blunder as the officers would draw their full salary contrary to the government's rule of ''no work no pay''.

The Congress leader questioned why these officer should be paid from the state exchequer for no work and cautioned that such a wrong step would ultimately become a costly affair for the state government as other government employees would also demand the same.

The Congress leader said the government should have disposed off their cases forthwith and awarded them punishment.

Two senior IAS officers, R C Behera and Santosh Kumar Mishra, and three IFS officers, V K Shukla, S K Acharaya anmd A K Jaiswal, who had been chargesheeted by the Vigilance, were yesterday stripped off their power and treated as ''Officer without any duty''.

Mr Patnaik said a even an ordinary employee accused of corruption is either dismissed or suspended from his job. But in the case of the five senior officers, the Chief Minister instead of punishing them, allowed to draw full salary for no work. Restrictions were also not imposed on them even though they were chargesheeted by the Vigilance.

This reflected how transparent Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik was in wiping out corruption from the administration, the Congress leader said and remarked that such action of the Chief Minister, would pave the way for other chargesheeted and corrupt officials to avail similar facility forcing the government to lose the state exchequer heavily.

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