Hyderabad, Feb 5: Nearly 100 IAS officers including retired Chief Secretaries Kaki Madhava Rao and Ramakanta Reddy have attended a meeting of the top bureaucrats of the state to discuss the onslaught of the CBI on their brethren on Saturday. They met the Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy earlier and explained to him how the IAS cadre of the state, known to be among the best in the country, was being sought to be projected as the most corrupt.

Speaking to the media after their meeting, IAS officers’ association President Prasant Mahapatra, General Secretary Raymond Peter, retired Chief Secretary Kaki Madhava Rao and senior IAS officer Bhale Rao have expressed the view that for every decision the minister and the cabinet should be made responsible and not the IAS officers alone.

This contention of the bureaucrats might lead to a stiff fight between the IAS and the CBI on one side and the IAS and the politicians on the other. During the course of this fight, the names of several ministers who were responsible for controversial decisions might come up.

Several IAS officials were of the view that the CBI Joint Director Lakshmi Narayana had no knowledge of the procedures of administration and has been making the officers guilty for every GO issued in his name.

The established procedure is that when the government takes a decision, the IAS officer of the concerned department issues the necessary GO with his signature. Though the concerned minister or the cabinet takes the decision, it is ultimately the IAS officer in whose name the GO is issued. After the CBI started haunting the IAS officers for the GOs they had issued, the officers tried to prevail on the Chief Secretary that they should make the concerned minister counter sign at least the draft GO which is kept in government records. But the Chief Secretary said this could not be done, as it was not the established practice anywhere in the country. The IAS officers were upset over the Chief Minister’s advise to them that arrest on mere charges and even suspension was not punishment and they could come out of the jail on bail and when they come out clean, they would get their jobs back. This is easier said than undergone. The trauma an officer and his family members undergo when arrested and bundled into a prison along with hardened criminals, will be agonizing. The IAS officers are also unhappy about the argument of the Home Minister Sabita Indra Reddy that officers have responsibility to check even when political leaders err. Several officers said that even when an officer sends a file, minister should not sign it blindly, but should use his or her wisdom and think about the interests of the people who had elected them. IAS officers had also pointed out that if one minister errs, the entire cabinet should own the responsibility. The officers also felt that that the CBI was leaving big fish that swallowed hundreds of crores of rupees and catching small fry. “Are only IAS officers corrupt?” they angrily questioned.

The IAS officers were apparently angry that the CBI has left out Sabita Indra Reddy who was the minister for mines when OMC deal was cleared and had thrown the entire blame on IAS officer Sri Lakshmi.

They have also questioned why the CBI has not made the APIIC Chairman and directors who had signed the Emaar deal responsible and made only L V Subramaniam who was the Vice Chairman at the time, an accused.

Senior bureaucrats who have full knowledge of the law had alleged that the CBI investigation was not in accordance to the Article 14 of the constitution and questioned if the agency had any special articles for its probe. Pointing at the historic event when Lal Bahadur Sastry has resigned, owning moral responsibility as Railway Minister for an accident for which he was no way responsible, the officers have questioned why the ministers were now shirking their responsibility.

At the end of the day, the IAS officers officially informed the media that they would forget about the present phase and concentrate on development of the state and people’s welfare. But according to sources, they would be divulging the names of ministers and politicians who were involved in corruption. This might have far reaching consequences in the days to come.