“I have seen 17 IAS officers in my career and most of them are honest,” said G. Krishnamurthy, Sagayam’s secretary, “but Sagayam is different in the sense that he expects the system to be clean and will not hesitate to punish his subordinates, while the other officers may be honest but will overlook if corruption is around the place, thinking ‘if I report then I would have to take wrath of these people’.” It came as little surprise then, when in March 2011, the election commission hand-picked Sagayam to oversee the election in Madurai. The unstable political tussle in the district, where Durai’s father Alagiri was campaigning, was threatening to cause problems during the polling. In April, two cases were filed against Sagayam by the DMK as a result of his work leading up to the elections. In one, he was accused of having influenced college students’ votes by pushing for a change of government. A second case alleged he had asked an employee to file a case against Alagiri, following a violent incident in which, Sagayam says, his officer and a videographer filmed Alagiri handing out cash to voters. Both cases were dismissed by the court; Sagayam says his effigy was burnt by DMK partymen, angered at the embarrassment to their campaign. He was later awarded an appreciation certificate from the chief election commissioner, S Y. Quraishi for conducting “free and fair elections
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 18:52:40 +0000
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