Hair found in UP minister's curd cup, 2 milk cooperative officials sacked

Taking strong exception to the presence of a strand of hair in a cup of curd bought by a senior Uttar Pradesh minister, the services of two officials of the milk cooperative which runs the leading brand in the state were terminated and two others demoted last week.

The minister was very angry over the incident and personally approached the chief minister to lodge a complaint. Principal Secretary, Dairy Development, Anant Kumar Singh had earlier reprimanded the cooperative's factory manager but as it failed to pacify the minister, a three-member team was asked to carry out a surprise inspection, a senior official of the department said today on condition of anonymity.
On the report of the three-member team submitted to Singh, two senior officials of the cooperative were terminated and two others demoted, the official said.

Employees of the milk cooperative are angry over the "extreme action" and have alleged that the officials were neither handed over the inspection report nor the chargesheet. "They are angry that the officials were not been given a chance to explain their point," the official said. A government spokesman, however, said that the special team found that many places in the plant were unclean and the action was taken to send a strong message. To a question how the officials were directly terminated without issuing any notice, the spokesman said there is a provision for such rare cases in the constitution of the federation.