A senior official who is set to retire from his job at the end of this month tried to loot everything he had received in the meantime. In this process, he was caught by ACB officials by demanding a bribe of Rs 5 crore. Tribal Welfare Department Engineer-in-Chief (ENC) Sabbavarapu Srinivas was caught accepting a bribe from a contractor in his office in Vijayawada on Thursday.
This is the third time that Srinivas has been caught in ACB cases. Srinivas was caught red-handed by ACB officials while accepting a bribe of Rs 25 lakh from contractor Krishnam Raju at the Tribal Welfare Bhavan in Vijayawada. He demanded a bribe of Rs 5 crore to sanction bills worth Rs 35.5 crore for the construction work of Ekalavya Model Schools undertaken with central government funds in Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam districts.
The contractor handed over Rs. 25 lakhs under the first installment. He approached the ACB officials after they demanded another Rs. 25 lakhs under the second installment. In this context, the ACB officials arrested Srinivas. There are strong allegations that Chief Engineer S. Srinivas was nurtured by the both TDP and YSRCP governments.
There are doubts as to how S. Srinivas, who worked as the Chief Engineer of the Tribal Welfare Department for five years during the YSRCP government, continued in the same post even after the TDP coalition government came to power? There is a campaign that the recommendations of several MLAs and ministers from North Andhra are behind the continuation of a high-ranking official like the corrupt as the Chief Engineer of the Tribal Welfare Department.
It seems that the ministry was behind the government issuing orders on July 31, cancelling the ACB cases against Srinivas, who is set to retire at the end of this month. He was caught by the ACB for the third time when he recently applied to the government to continue him for another two years.
CM Chandrababu Naidu boasted that corrupt officials who worked in the YSRCP government would not be continued in the TDP government. But now questions are being raised about how the Tribal Welfare Chief Engineer Srinivas, who has been caught by the ACB officials, was continued for the past year and a half.