By IANS,
Hyderabad : The Andhra Pradesh government is set to suspend top Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and home secretary B.P. Acharya, who was arrested by the CBI Monday in the Emaar-APIIC township scam.
The state government may issue orders Wednesday to suspend Acharya, who was questioned by CBI sleuths Tuesday in connection with the role played by him and others in the scam.
The suspension orders will be issued by the chief secretary after receiving written communication from the CBI, official sources said.
In this context, the meeting of CBI joint director V.V. Lakshminarayana with the chief secretary Pankaj Dwivedi on Tuesday assumes significance. The meeting at the state secretariat lasted for 45 minutes.
As per the rules, a government employee is suspended if he or she spends 48 hours in detention.
Lakshminarayana told reporters that he discussed with the chief secretary various issues related to coordination with the government in the ongoing investigations in various cases.
Acharya would be the second IAS official in the state to be suspended after his arrest. In November last year the government had suspended Y. Srilakshmi after her arrest in an illegal mining case involving former Karnataka minister G. Janardhana Reddy.
Meanwhile, the CBI grilled Acharya on the first day of his two-day CBI custody at Dilkusha guest house.
The IAS official as then managing director of Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) had allegedly played a key role in diluting the equity of APIIC in a joint venture formed with Emaar Properties to develop an upscale township in Hyderabad.
The CBI alleged that this caused huge losses to the government agency.
The CBI has booked him for cheating, criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust and also under Prevention of Corruption Act.
Acharya’s wife Ranjeev Acharya, who is also an IAS officer, called on him at the guest house.
Meanwhile, the CBI has moved state high court, challenging an order of the special CBI court, dismissing its petitions for the custody of two accused.
The investigating agency had sought the custody of Emaar MGF head finance for south G. V. Vijayraghavan, who was arrested last Saturday. It had also sought custody of Sunil Reddy, an aide of YSR Congress party leader Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy.
The CBI joint director dismissed the allegations made by Vijayraghavan’s counsel in the court that the CBI tortured him during the interrogation.
To another query, he denied targeting anybody during the investigations. “We are only doing investigations. We are not targeting anybody,” he said when asked about the allegations by Jaganmohan Reddy that the CBI is targeting him.
Jagan’s mother Y.S. Vijayamma has also written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, alleging that the CBI under pressure from the Congress government is targeting him.