HYDERABAD: After 48 hours of high drama following his transfer orders, IPS officer K

was relieved as

(ACB) additional director by the agency's DG D Bhoobathi Babu on Friday evening after written orders from

(CS)

. But soon thereafter the DG himself went on leave to protest the government decision. His leave has also been approved by the CS.

The transfer of Srinivas Reddy, who was head of the Special Investigating team (SIT) probing the liquor syndicate, has come about just as the ACB was preparing to submit a status report on the liquor probe to the high court on April 16. Srinivas Reddy lost the battle to stay on as SIT chief after the CS rejected ACB DG's written request to allow Reddy to continue. Dwivedi told Babu in writing that the government understood the concerns of the ACB chief but added that the transfer was on as the officer had been promoted and assigned to supervise coastal security.

After receiving the orders, the ACB DG held a long meeting with SIT members, including Srinivas Reddy, at the ACB headquarters on Friday. At the end of meeting, in the absence of

who replaced him, Srinivas Reddy handed over the charge to ACB director

. "Without any fear or favour, we have done a very good work under DG Bhoobathi Babu. I also thank him for taking up the issue of transfer with the government which is a very rare act," Srinivas Reddy told TOI.

On possible political motives behind his transfer, the officer, without referring to any particular person, said that SIT probes are prone to political intervention and there was nothing unanticipated or unusual about it.

As part of the 'coastal security scheme', the Centre in 2005 decided to set up six Marine Police Stations (MPS) at Gilakaladinne, Kalingapatnam, Vakalapudi, Suryalanka, Rishikonda and Durgarajapatnam at a cost of Rs 32.67 crore to safeguard the 974-km coastline in the state.

But it turns out that the enthusiasm was short-lived. The CAG's audit scrutiny revealed that adequate attention was not paid by either the state or the Centre in implementing this much-talked about scheme concerning national security as a result of which the MPS launched by the state government has failed to achieve the goal of safeguarding the coast against infiltration, intrusion and other illegal activities.

The audit revealed that most of the interceptor boats supplied to MPS were lying idle and the remaining were thoroughly underutilized jeopardizing the coastal security. Another startling fact that came to light was that none of the MPS has its own jetties. Therefore, the boats had to be berthed at the jetties of the nearby fishing harbours or ports which were located about 40 to 130 km away from the MPS. Due to the daily travelling from MPS to jetties, the operational work of the interceptor boats got hampered and the maintenance cost increased.

According to the CAG report, eight out of the 17 interceptor boats had not been put to use by the MPS due to various problems including repairs, lack of crew and jetty facility and among the remaining nine boats, five were under-utilized by 82% to 97%. The department did not provide the details related to the utilization of the remaining four boats which they received from the government only in June 2011.

The report said that adequate staff was not recruited to manage MPS. Apparently, 75% of driver posts, five per cent of engine driver posts, 42% of master posts and 33% of Sarang posts have been lying vacant.