Senior IAS officer Praveen Prakash, principal secretary in the Andhra Pradesh chief minister’s office (CMO), who received a show-cause notice from former chief secretary L V Subrahmanyam for allegedly defying the service rules, gave a reply to the notice, two days after Subrahmanyam was shunted out.
Ironically, it was Praveen Prakash who issued the transfer orders to Subrahmanyam, but since he had received the show cause notice from the latter, he cannot ignore the same as per the rules.
So, Prakash sent his reply to the show cause notice to new chief secretary Neerabh Kumar Prasad on Thursday.
In his reply, he defended placing of the proposal related to 'YSR Lifetime Achievement Awards' before the cabinet, as it was discussed in detail during the preparatory meeting held by the chief minister where Subramanyam was also present.
“In the meeting, it was decided to place this proposal before the Cabinet, subject to concurrence by Finance Department for the estimated expenditure of Rs. 10 crores per annum. Once the concurrence was received from finance department, I felt it was natural and in sequential order to bring the proposal to the cabinet,” he explained.
With regard to not bringing the proposal of 'Gram Nyayalas' to the cabinet even after the approval by Competent Authority, Prakash said as the locations of Gram Nyayalas required further deliberations, the matter would be brought forward only in the subsequent cabinet. Though the matter was placed as a table agenda in the immediate cabinet meeting, it could not be taken up in consultation with law secretary.
Stating that whatever he had done was well within the business rules, Prakash appealed to the chief secretary to drop further proceedings.