Chhattisgarh officer fined Rs 53,000 for draining reservoir in search of colleague’s smartphone

Just days after a food inspector was suspended for having 42 lakh litres of water drained out from a reservoir to recover his expensive phone, the Chhattisgarh government pulled up his senior officer, who he said gave him verbal permission to empty water up to five feet. The senior officer has now been fined Rs 53,000 for approving the draining of the reservoir.
The Superintendent Engineer of the Indravati project wrote to Sub Divisional Officer RK Dhivar on May 26, asking why the cost of wasted water should not be recovered from his salary.
The letter pointed out that water is required in all reservoirs for irrigation and other purposes during summer and is extremely precious.
A food officer in Koilibeda block of Kanker district, Rajesh Vishwas,
was on a holiday at the Paralkot Reservoir of Kherkatta Dam when he accidentally dropped his smartphone worth around Rs 1 lakh into the reservoir. The incident occurred while he was taking a selfie with his friends.
The smartphone fell into the stilling basin of the dam’s waste weir, which had 15 feet deep water, and locals dived in to try and find it. When the effort failed, the officer got two big 30 hp diesel pumps running continuously for four days and emptied out 42 lakh litres of water, enough to irrigate 1,500 acres of farmland, to retrieve his phone.
The area has over 10 feet-deep water even during summers, and animals often drink from it. The water, through a canal, is also used by local farmers to irrigate their fields.
Vishwas claimed he was trying to retrieve his phone as it had official departmental data, and the water was “unusable”. “I went to the dam on Sunday with a few friends to take a bath there on my off day. My phone slipped into the overflow tankers, whose water is not usable. It was 10 feet deep. Locals tried to find it but failed. They told me they can surely find it if the water was two-three feet shallower.”
“I called the SDO and requested him to allow me to drain some water into the nearby canal if there was no problem in doing so. He said it was not an issue if three-four feet deep water was drained, and would in fact benefit the farmers who would have more water. That’s why I got help from locals to drain around three feet of water and got my phone back,” he said.
The water resources department official later told local reporters that he had okayed draining water up to five feet, but a lot more was taken out.
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