Alleging harassment by superior, IAS officer announces resignation as Mysuru municipal commissioner

Mysuru (Karnataka): IAS officer Shilpa Nag on Thursday announced her resignation as the municipal commissioner of Mysuru, alleging harassment by the deputy commissioner over the pandemic management.

Reading out her 10-page handwritten resignation letter at a press conference here, Nag alleged that she faced humiliation at every meeting.

In a press conference, Nag said, "Today I am resigning. There is no conducive atmosphere for me to discharge my duties. No one should ever face a situation like this."

"The Covid situation in Mysuru has been brought under control after taking several measures, including setting up of Covid call centres at each and every ward (65 in total) and forming Covid task forces comprising social activists and political leaders at the ward level. But still Sindhuri continued to humiliate each and every officer involved in this process. During the meetings every day, she tried to highlight one mistake or the other," Nag alleged.

She added that if her resignation can give in some respite to Mysuru, so be it.

"As a Deputy Commissioner, she has every right to lead the team, but she has no right to abuse us and humiliate us at every level. After taking pains for about 15 days and interacting with the officials of the Bengaluru civic body, who developed and run the ‘Apta Mitra' app in Bengaluru, I was ready with a plan to rollout a similar kind of app here. But Sindhuri hogged the entire credit for creating this app at a recent meeting convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, without mentioning a single officer's name," Nag said.

She further alleged that Sindhuri had conspired to get rid of her from all crucial internal WhatsApp groups that were created to keep everyone in the loop about Covid development and funds utilisation.

"Sindhuri tried to get rid of me from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds management group. The CSR funds alone were utilised to tackle Covid in the city, but despite being the DC, she (Sindhuri) did not allot even a single rupee for the MCC," she alleged.

Rejecting the allegation of harassment as untrue, deputy commissioner of Mysuru district Rohini Sindhuri said, "The Mysuru City Corporation was submitting unsigned and contradictory ward-wise COVID-19 figures on new cases, deaths and active cases. I had ordered that same be rectified."

Sindhuri also said that Nag had of late stopped attending coronavirus review meetings convened by her.

Ever since Sindhuri was posted as Mysuru DC last year, she has been at loggerheads with politicians as well as civic officials.

Last month, she was accused of thwarting oxygen supply to Chamarajnagar district by the Chamarajanagar Deputy Commissioner and district in-charge minister S. Suresh Kumar after lack of oxygen supply had resulted in the death of over 24 patients within 24 hours there.

Sindhuri is a 2009 batch IAS officer, while Nag belongs to the 2014 batch.

(With inputs from PTI and IANS)