Whistleblower officer was in hit list of his bosses, elected reps

As BBMP assistant commissioner (advertisement), K Mathai was always in the hit list of his superiors as well as the elected representatives, who made several attempts to shunt him out of the civic agency.

Mathai, who had served in the Indian Air Force for 19 years before joining the Karnataka Administrative Service (KAS), had a harrowing time when BJP corporators hounded him in the BBMP Council on March 26, 2015, for lodging a police complaint against unknown members of the BBMP’s Appeal Committee, who had forged the signature of the then BBMP commissioner M Lakshminarayana. BJP corporator T V Krishna was the chairperson of the Appeal Committee when the forgery took place.

Obliging the BJP corporators, the Congress government tried to remove Mathai but Upalokayukta Justice Subhash Adi stopped it on the grounds that it will adversely affect the ongoing investigation into the advertisement scam. The investigation is still in progress but the government ran out of patience to wait for a few more reports and ordered Mathai’s 24th transfer in nine years of his service.