Telangana’s Anti-Corruption Bureau has asked Special Chief Secretary Arvind Kumar to appear before it on 1 July in connection with the financial irregularities related to the Formula E race held during the BRS regime.
This comes days after former minister and BRS working president KT Rama Rao was interrogated by the ACB for almost eight hours on 16 June. Kumar had appeared before the ACB in January this year.
Senior IAS officer Arvind Kumar has once again been summoned by the ACB in connection with the alleged irregularities involving the transfer of Rs 54 crore from the state exchequer for the Formula E race. Kumar was the Secretary of the Municipal Affairs and Urban Development (MAUD) Department with KT Rama Rao as the minister when the fund transfer happened.
He is currently in charge of the state’s Disaster Management Department, where he was shunted after the Congress government assumed office. The IAS officer has been designated as accused number 2 in the Formula E case, followed by the then HMDA’s Chief Engineer, BLN Reddy, who is accused number 3.
The ACB has accused KT Rama Rao of committing irregularities in the Formula E case, directly transferring funds to the organisers when the official sponsors backed out. Rao maintained that procedures were jumped because it was election time, and he had done it to save the image of the state.
He also said that the transferred sum was still lying in the account of the Formula E organisers, but the Congress government has so far not made any attempt to retrieve the funds. The BRS government wanted the Formula E race to be held in 2024 after its success in 2023, but the event was cancelled by the Congress government after it came to power, citing huge costs. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has also taken up the case.