Accusing Mysuru Deputy Commissioner Rohini Sindhuri of ‘humiliating’ her, the Commissioner of Mysuru City Corporation (MCC), Shilpa Nag, announced that she was stepping down from her post on Thursday. She added that she would soon meet Chief Secretary P Ravi Kumar and discuss the matter. Reading out her 10-page handwritten resignation letter at a press conference, Nag alleged that she faced humiliation at every meeting. "The COVID-19 situation in Mysuru has been brought under control after taking several measures, including setting up of COVID-19 call centres at each and every ward (65 in total) and forming COVID-19 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.
"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 ran 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-19 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-19 in the city, but despite being the DC, she (Sindhuri) did not allot even a single rupee for the MCC," she alleged.
Sindhuri is a 2009 batch IAS officer, while Nag belongs to the 2014 batch.
Responding to the row, Rohini Sindhuri released a clarification and said, “It is untrue that there was any harassment from me and none has been mentioned even in the statement issued by Shilpa Nag. Being Deputy Commissioner and in the middle of handling COVID-19 pandemic, I have the duty to manage and control COVID-19. All my focus and actions have been to discharge the said responsibility alone.”
She further alleged that Shilpa Nag had stopped attending COVID-19 reviews and that the Mysuru City Corporation had submitted contradictory ward-wise figures such as active cases and deaths. According to Rohini Sindhuri, she had ordered that government COVID Care Centres be opened in Mysuru City which had failed to open a single CCC until recently. Rohini Sindhuri further alleged that Shilpa Nag was made in-charge of CSR coming from ‘Private Industries, Factories, IT Companies’ for the whole district. She said that she was later informed that the whole amount was spent within Mysuru city itself, and therefore, she had asked for a full and proper account of it on June 1, 2021, and is yet to receive a reply.