- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
A COUPLE of high-ranking bureaucrats in the South Indian state of Telangana have fuelled a controversy by touching the feet of the state’s chief minister, K Chandrasekhar Rao, at official events. The matter has drawn a heavy criticism from the Opposition.
P Venkatarami Reddy, the district collector of Siddipet, was found touching the feet of the chief minister to seek his blessings at an event last Sunday (20). The incident happened after Rao went to Siddipet district headquarters to inaugurate the collectorate. Also, A Sarath, the collector of Kamareddy district, fell at Rao’s feet during the inauguration of the integrated collectorate in his district.
Rao, who is also the chief of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi party, made Reddy sit on the collector’s chair after inaugurating the building. The latter, an Indian Administrative Officer, then rose from his seat and bent to touch the chief minister’s feet even as he tried to stop him. Telangana Chief Secretary M Somesh Kumar and several other senior officials were also present.
Reddy was slammed soon after as he was accused of dishonouring the self-respect of the IAS cadre officers by seeking to please the chief minister. Netizens condemned his act of bending before Rao after a video of the same went viral on social media.
Reddy, though, was unfazed by the criticism and said the chief minister is a fatherly figure to him. In a statement, the district collector said: “It is part of Telangana’s culture to take blessings of elders during auspicious occasions. I took the blessings of the CM who is like a fatherly figure to me when I was taking charge in the new collectorate.” He also said that Sunday (20) also happened to be Father’s Day and appealed to all to not make an issue out of it.
But the critics were not convinced. Anti-corruption activist Vijay Gopal slammed Reddy to ask: “This is gross misconduct by a public servant, how can he perform his duties unbiased after demonstrating this?”
Many netizens tagged the Indian government’s department of personnel and training and IAS Association to bring the issue to their notice and urged them to take action.
Opposition parties, including both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, also criticised Reddy.
Congress, BJP slam bureaucrat
Telangana Congress chief Uttam Kumar Reddy took to Twitter to condemn the incidents. Posting pictures of the same, he wrote: “Never seen this in independent India! Death of democratic institutions in Telangana!!”
Sravan Dasoju, a national spokesperson of the Congress, called the collector’s action obnoxious. He said Reddy is one of the many bureaucrats in Telangana who were enslaved by Rao, who is the first chief minister of the state which was born in 2014. He said the bureaucrats should know that they are accountable to the Constitution of India and not any individual who is in power.
Telangana BJP spokesperson K Krishna Saagar Rao accused Reddy of promoting a new bureaucratic culture in the state. He said if Reddy had any reverence for the chief minister, he should have done it privately and not in public. “What type of sycophancy is this?” he asked.
Recently, in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, a block development officer was seen trying to touch the feet of Anubrata Mandal, a local leader of the ruling Trinamool Congress, and also called him a ‘mahamanav’ (a great man). He was also criticised for the act.
