Asked to resign, babus in Adarsh scam refuse to go
Still struggling to form a committee to probe the Adarsh housing scam, the Maharashtra government was left red-faced on Tuesday after two former bureaucrats, whose kin have flats in the controversial housing society, refused to heed its advice that they resign the constitutional posts they now hold.
Still struggling to form a committee to probe the Adarsh housing scam, the Maharashtra government was left red-faced on Tuesday after two former bureaucrats, whose kin have flats in the controversial housing society, refused to heed its advice that they resign the constitutional posts they now hold.
Chief Secretary J P Dange said the state government had sought the resignations of Ramanand Tiwari as state information commissioner and Subhash Lalla as member of the state human rights commission member but they had declined to quit.
The government cannot sack the officials at once. It will have to apply to the President to remove Lalla, whose mother and daughter own flats at Adarsh, and to the Governor to remove Tiwari, whose son has a flat in the building.
Neither Tiwari nor Lalla responded to the calls the HT made to them.
Till late on Tuesday, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had meetings with the officials to select the probe panel and decide the scope of its inquiry. The two-member probe panel would comprise a retired high court judge or Supreme Court judge and a former chief secretary.
"The names are likely to be announced soon," sources close to the developments said, adding that the delay was because there were very few candidates who had not benefited from a government-allotted housing scheme.