Hyderabad: Yet another senior IAS officer in Andhra Pradesh finds himself in the dock for splurging government money for personal purposes.
VN Vishnu, who served as Collector of Guntur district from April 2011 to July 15, 2012, is accused of spending lakhs of rupees of government money without any budgetary provision or official sanction, official sources here said on Wednesday.
Vishnu is already under the CBI scanner over certain controversial land deals executed during his previous stint as Vice-Chairman of Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority. He was grilled by the CBI last week.
The 1993-batch promotee IAS officer was recently posted as Managing Director of AP State Warehousing Corp.
The State Vigilance and Enforcement Wing reportedly submitted a report to the government on Vishnu`s extravagant spending spree as Guntur Collector, in connection with his daughter`s marriage slated for August 2.
Taking a serious view of this, Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy reportedly directed the agency to further probe the matter and submit a report, the sources said.
The matter has also become a legal case with the Guntur District Legal Services Authority slapping a notice on the (incumbent) Collector and Joint Collector over non-payment of money to the contractor who executed the works.
Vishnu had made different government departments spend about Rs 40 lakh on "renovating" the Collector`s bungalow. There was no approval from the government for these works nor was there any budgetary provision, the sources said.
They said he got the house centrally air-conditioned besides installing a lift (Rs 8 lakh) and a generator (Rs 6 lakh) after his daughter`s marriage was fixed. Extra rooms and toilets were built and the entire work cost Rs 40 lakh.
Another such extravagance by a young IAS officer in Guntur also came to light when Vishnu`s case was being probed by the vigilance department, the sources said.
As Joint Collector, 2005-batch officer Gaurav Uppal had got his official bungalow `renovated` at a cost of Rs 20 lakh about two years ago without budgetary sanction.
PTI
