The 38-year-old IAS officer, B Chandrakala from Uttar Pradesh hit the headlines on Saturday when CBI teams raided her houses in UP and Telangana as part of its investigation into a controversial mining scam.
The 2008 batch IAS officer was well known for the knack of taking action against her subordinates, primarily due to the viral videos of the officer going out on sudden inspections and pulling up civic officials. She also took action against lack of quality in building material, lack of sanitation and so on.
The surprise raids and inspections were conducted as part of an investigation into illegal sand mining cases in Uttar Pradesh. The CBI conducted searches on a total of 12 locations in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Telangana.
It may be noted that CBI launched an investigation into illegal sand mining after Allahabad High Court order in July 2017. However, the details of Saturday’s search operation were not immediately known.
Chandrakala is a huge hit on social media. She hogged the limelight in late 2014 when a video of the woman IAS officer reprimanding erring civic official in UP’s Bulandshahr circulated like wildfire on social media. She was also involved in a controversy when an 18-year-old was sent to jail for trying to ‘click a selfie with the IAS officer’ in 2016.
Chandrakala who is well connected to Banjara tribe hails from the fertiliser city of Ramagundam in Peddapalli district in Telangana. Her dad is a retired senior technician in the Fertiliser Corporation of India in Ramagundam, while her husband- A Ramulu plies his trade as a deputy executive engineer in Sriramsagar Project at Lower Manair Dam in Karimnagar town.
Chandrakala did her graduation in Geography from Koti Women’s College under Osmania University in Hyderabad and then did her post-graduation in Economics through ‘distance education’ and successfully cracked IAS in her first attempt itself in 2008.
She was assigned to UP cadre. Chandrakala had previously worked in Allahabad, Hamirpur, Mathura, Bulandshahr and Meerut, before being chosen by the NDA government as the director of Swachh Bharat Mission under Union ministry of ‘drinking water and sanitation’. She was soon sent back to her cadre, Uttar Pradesh, in February 2018.
(With inputs from HT)
