Many were surprised when Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy sanctioned the prosecution of two IAS officials in the Emaar case while denying the same for TTD EO L.V. Subrahmanyam. Earlier too, Mr Subrahmanyam had escaped the CBI dragnet when late Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy had denied prosecution of the bureaucrat in the Volksw-agen case despite the CBI establishing that Rs 11.68 crore had gone missing because of the official’s decision to shift funds from an escrow account to that of Vasista Wahan, the fraud company of Schuster.
In the Emaar case, Mr Subrahmanyam was facing several allegations including fixing a low price on land, entertaining the proposal of the developer to create a third party interest despite a strict “no” from the principal secretary and recommending villa plots to purchasers.
“It appears that the CM was influenced more by the public’s perception of Mr Acharya and the goodwill enjoyed by Mr Subrahmanyam while taking the decisions which were definitely not based on the material submitted by the CBI,” a senior official said.
The CBI, on the other hand, has exonerated officials like former chief secretary S.V. Prasad without even questioning him. It also did not bother to look into the role of another IAS official Lakshmi Parthasarathy, in doling out financial incentives to Ramky Pharma City through GO No. 741.
Inquiries revealed that the finance department and the then chief secretary had rejected reimbursements of Rs 3.15 crore of stamp duty and registration fees but Ms Parthasarathy had interrupted the file's circulation and recommended that Ramky, though ineligible as per Act, be given incentives keeping in view its mega project status.
The CBI also found prima facie no irregularities in the GO issued by Mr Prasad exempting Bramhani Infratech, an IT firm, from Urban Land Ceiling Act. Ironically, the CBI wanted to further examine minister D. Prasada Rao and IAS official M. Samuel for two GOs (104 and 293) exempting land given to Raghuram Cements from the Agriculture Land Ceiling Act. Similarly, it wanted to examine minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah and officer Adityanath Das for issuing orders permitting an industry to draw water and minister Sabita Indra Reddy and IAS official Ms Y. Srilakshmi for allowing the change of name of Raghuram Cements to Bharati Cements.