Senior bureaucrats are wary of shouldering the responsibility to probe the allegations and counter-allegations of disproportionate assets by two warring senior officers — DGP V. Dinesh Reddy and Godavari Valley Authority chairman Umesh Kumar. Given a choice, no official would want to take up the inquiry, sources said, though the government is likely to appoint Minnie Mathew, the chief commissioner of land administration, as the inquiry officer to implement Wednesday’s High Court order. With the court insisting that only an officer senior to both Mr Dinesh Reddy and Mr Umesh Kumar, either from the IAS or IPS, should conduct the probe, the government will have little choice beyond Ms Mathew and Mr S. Bhale Rao.
But Ms Mathew could again become the natural choice, as Mr Rao will retire from service on superannuation in two months. Both cops at odds belong to the 1977 batch, and among the IPS only two officers of 1975 batch are senior to them. Of them, Mr K.R. Nandan will retire by this month-end, while the other, Mr P. Gautam Kumar, is fighting a case against the appointment of Mr Dinesh Reddy as DGP.
Among IAS officers, too, only three are available to conduct the inquiry. Among them, chief secretary Pankaj Dwivedi is set to retire in June. Ms Mathew is already the inquiry officer into allegations against former Hyderabad collector Navin Mittal. The government appointed her as inquiry officer to probe into irregularities and misappropriation of funds in housing scheme for weaker sections since 1983.