Kakinada, Feb 2nd: A majority members of the zilla parishad of East Godavari and a few MLAs of Opposition parties pointed out that the corrupt practices of the officials of mines and groundwater departments caused a steep decline in income from various sources, particularly auctioning of sand reaches. The members raised the point at the ZP budget 2010-11 meeting held here on Tuesday. A heated debate was held on the issue for more than two hours. During the debate, the minister for social welfare, Mr. Pilli Subhashchandra Bose agreed to constitute a committee to investigate the reasons for the sudden fall of the income.

The minister strongly criticized the officials way of discharging duties and accused the assistant director M. Venkateswarurlu of the mines and K. Venkateswara Rao of the groundwater department of encouraging syndicates and falling in corrupt practices in auctioning of sand reaches. Later, the minister directed Mr. Venkateswarulu to take steps of issuing fresh notification on the sand auctions. ZP chairman, Mr. CH Venugopala Krishna, collector Mr. Gopala Krishna Dwevedi and the MLAs and ZP members attended the meeting.