Naveen strips five senior officers of duty

Bhubaneswar, May 19 (UNI) After dropping four Ministers from his cabinet on last Tuesday, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has stripped of power from five senior officers, chargesheeted by the Vigilance Department.

These officers, two of them senior IAS and the rest three belonging to the IFS cadre, were divested of their powers and duties yesterday and placed as ''officers without duty''.

Official sources said the Chief Minister's direction would be treated with immediate effect and the officers had been asked not to exercise their authority in their respective departments.

Those who were stripped of their power, included Special Secretary in the Health and Family Welfare Department Ramesh Chandra Behera, Special Secretary Planning and Coordination Santosh Kumar Mishra, both belonged to the Indian Administrative Service cadre.

The other three senior officers belonged to the Indian Forest Serive(IFS). They are Birendra Kumar Shukla,Sishir Kumar Acharaya and Amresh Kumar Jaiswal.

Sources said Mr Shukla was suspended when he was holding the Divisional Forest Officer post at Jeypore five years back and since then he has been staying away by submitting regular leave applications which were rejected by the department.

Mr Acharaya was posted as Conservator of Forest (policy and planning) in the office of the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest while Mr Jaiswal is presently posted as General Manager(Forest) in the state government undertaking Orissa Mining Corporation.

All the five officers had been chargesheeted by the state vigilance and cases had been initiated against them. Mr Mishra was earlier suspended by the government, but was later appointed on the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal.

Mr Behera was chargesheeted by the state vigilance for possessing property disproportionate to his known source of income.

UNI DP BA AKP1418