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Monday, April 16, 2012

A ROGUES GALLERY : "CORRUPTION 'EATS AWAY' THE STEEL FRAME" –

EXPRESS BUZZ
By Express News Service
  
A "proud record" indeed !

This list does not include Mr Arvind & Mrs Tinnu Joshi from MP.  He was JS (G) in the MOD towards the latter part of our service. It seems they could not find a more corrupt man to occupy such a post!.

Politicians have a reputation for corruption and bureaucrats for being upright. Things changed in 2011, the Year of Scams, when the UPA government gave its nod to chargesheet IAS officers in 15 corruption cases. April is the cruellest month; last week, the CBI arrested two senior IAS officers—Dr Jairaj Phatak and Ramanand Tiwari—for their alleged complicity in the Adarsh s cam. On April 3, the CBI filed a chargesheet against former Uttar Pradesh bureaucrat PK Jain and others for alleged irregularities in utilisation of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) funds. Senior IAS officer and Revenue Board member Pradeep Shukla is already under the s canner in the s cam dealing with projects of worth around `250 crore and the CBI is investigating the role of senior IAS officer S P Ram as well. Ram, former director general of family welfare, is accused of pre-deciding the vendor for awarding the contract of medical equipment through Uttar Pradesh Small Industries Corporation (UPSIC). A contract of `4.42 crore was awarded to two firms based in Moradabad which resulted in a loss of `1.5 crore to the exchequer.

Haryana’s multi-crore forestry s cam is likely to hit the headlines in a big way. The Centre has instructed the Haryana government to file an FIR in the three specific cases of corruption, and asked the CBI to investigate the s cam. It
reportedly involves two officers on special duty in the chief minister’s office, R R Beri and R D Sheokand, several IAS and IFS (Indian Forest Service) officers like H C Disodia and J K Rawat, as well as Supreme Court committee members —
besides ministers and MLAs. Most big guys start small. The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) unearthed assets worth over `118 crore allegedly belonging to Nitish Janardhan Thakur, a Deputy Collector posted in Raigad district of Maharashtra. IAS and IPS officers, serving and retired, have been arrested and jailed in states all over the nation like Maharashtra, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland and Delhi. The ministry of personnel has given the total number of IAS officers placed under suspension as 31. Is the steel frame of the bureaucracy melting?

Last year, in response to an RTI query, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) released a list of 13 corrupt babus. Of the 13, three are from the Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre. Two each are from Punjab and Odisha. Files have been sent to the PMO seeking permission to act against three others.

The officers include Karan Bir Singh Sidhu (Punjab), R K Shrivastava (AGMUT), Kavaddi Narsimha (AGMUT), J S L Vasava (Assam-Manipur), R S Shrivastava (Rajasthan), L V Subramaniam (Andhra Pradesh), Mandeep Singh (Punjab), Sanjeev Kumar (Haryana) and Subhash Chand Ahluwalia (Himachal Pradesh), Rakesh Mohan (AGMUT), Prafulla Chandra Mishra (Odisha), Sudhir Prasad (Jharkhand) and Vinod Kumar (Odisha). Shrivastava has eight different cases against him and Vinod Kumar six.

The Adarsh scam highlights the unholy nexus between the political class and the bureaucracy. Last week, the CBI arrested Dr Jairaj Phatak, a senior serving IAS officer and Member Secretary of the Regional Welfare Board of Western
Maharashtra and along with a retired colleague, Ramanand Tiwari. An IAS officer from the 1978 batch, Pathak’s resume is impressive: IIT Mumbai, a Harvard master’s degree, and a doctorate from Mumbai University. He was slated for promotion to Additional Chief Secretary and by this year-end would have made it to Chief Secretary. Pathak’s son owns a flat in Adarsh. Forty-nine-year-old Pradeep Vyas of the 1989 batch was working as secretary in Maharashtra’s finance department when he was picked up by the CBI on March 21, 2012, a day later the state government put him under suspension. His wife Seema Vyas, also an IAS officer, owns a flat in Adarsh.

If Adarsh was vertical s camming, in Andhra Pradesh, corruption plumbed the depths. The mining s cam, which felled powerful politican Janardhan Reddy, also claimed the liberty of two senior IAS officials — Y Srilakshmi and BP Acharya.
Srilakshmi, regarded as one of the most powerful IAS officers in the state, was arrested in the case related to the illegal iron ore mining by former Karnataka minister Gali Janardhan Reddy’s Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC) while Acharya was arrested in the APIIC-Emaar s cam. Srilakshmi worked as a secretary (industries and commerce) between May 2006 to October 2009 when the YSR government allotted iron ore mines to the OMC. The CBI investigation shows a deliberate omission by Srilakshmi in granting the mining lease. The CBI also alleges she demanded a huge bribe, running into crores of rupees, from an applicant C Shashi Kumar to grant a Prospecting Licence. Now she is lodged in the Central Prison for Women, Chanchalguda, charged under Section 120-B read with 409 of IPC and Section 13 (2) read with 13 (1) (d) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. B P Acharya was serving as the principal secretary (home) when he was arrested for corruption regarding the APIIC-Emaar s cam. He was the managing director of AP Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) when the alleged irregularities leading to the dilution of APIIC’s equity in the joint venture with Emaar properties, the Emaar Hills Township Private Limited (EHTPL), took place. The CBI alleges he played a key role in the APIIC deal with Emaar Properties and the subsequent dilution of the government’s stake in the project that caused a huge loss of revenue to the state exchequer. Acharya was arrested on January 30 this year and charged under Sections 120-B read with 420, 409 477-A of IPC and Section 13 (2) read with 13 (1) (c) and (d) of Prevention of Corruption Act.

Disproportionate assets are a sure sign of corruption. In November 2011, the enforcement directorate attached property worth `350 crore belonging to supended Madhya Pradesh IAS officers Arvind and Tinu Joshi. The same month, a 39-yearold IAS officer K Dhanalakshmi Gowda of Uttar Pradesh cadre, 2001 batch, who was serving as Director in the Ministry of Social Justice, was chargesheeted by the CBI for allegedly possessing disproportionate assets of Rs 3.15 crore; the CBI raided her bases in Delhi and Bangalore. “Most of these assets have allegedly been acquired by her as benami properties in the name of her mother, who abetted [her] to acquire the assets in her name,” a CBI spokesperson had stated about the bureaucrat who had at one time served as PS to Foreign Minister S M Krishna. In August 2011, 1991-batch IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre Pradeep Kumar was jailed for his role in the Rs 130 crore National Rural Health Mission s cam—he allegedly accepted a bribe of `4.85 lakh and acquired disproportionate assets. Kumar was the state health secretary when the `130-crore s cam took place.

Vigilance officials in Odisha arrested 1989-batch IAS officer Vinod Kumar last year for evading summons. The bureaucrat is facing trial for allegedly conniving, forging documents and sanctioning more than `88 lakh to two builders fraudulently during his tenure as MD of the ORHDC in 2001. Arrested earlier in 2006, Kumar has been under suspension since July 27, 2006.

The Central Vigilance Commission has been awaiting permission for four months from various government departments to prosecute 45 officials for graft. Of the total 29 corruption cases, nine belong to the Ministry of Finance, four to Ministry of Railways, two each to Ministry of Human Resources and Development, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, State Bank of India and one each to the Defence Ministry and Government of National Capital territory of Delhi. According to CVC data uploaded in February, permission to prosecute officers in Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Dena Bank, Canara Bank, Industrial Development Bank of India, Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, Ministry of Steel and Ministry of Home Affairs is pending.

Four hundred and fifty four Class ‘A’ officers, including eight joint secretaries and 44 directors haven’t declared their immovable property yet. The government has recommended “appropriate action” against them. The list includes eight joint secretaries and 44 directors. Out of these 454 Central Secretariat Service Officers, the highest number of defaulters are from the department of agriculture and cooperation (58). The home ministry is next with 40 followed by the ministry of health and family welfare (36), environment (32), defence (28), culture (14), coal (11) and bio-technology (7).

Corruption has a long history in the bureaucracy. 1971-batch IAS officer Neera Yadav is the first Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh to be jailed for corruption. In 2010, she was sentenced to four years after a CBI court found her guilty of
violating rules to help Flex Industries get an industrial plot in Noida in 1995 when she was the chairman of the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (Noida). The Commonwealth Games s cam also claimed bureaucratic s calps—
Prasar Bharati CEO BS Lalli and Director-General Aruna Sharma were sacked, and the CBI registered cases against them for colluding with the UK-based broadcast firm SIS LIVE during the Commonwealth Games 2010 that resulted in a loss of `135 crore. Ravi Inder Singh, an IAS officer in the home ministry was arrested by the Delhi Police and jailed for passing on sensitive information to business houses in exchange for cash and sexual favours.

The police is also on the roll of dishonour. The CBI booked Delhi Police assistant commissioner Udayveer Singh Rathi for amassing disproportionate assets. Last year, the Mumbai unit of the CBI’s anti-corruption wing registered a case against Manoj Malviya, the additional commissioner (security) of the Bureau of Civil Aviation, New Delhi, (1998 batch) for accepting favours from the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and GVK industries. IPS officer K K Indoria was on the run after the Himachal Pradesh High Court rejected his bail application in a corruption case involving a bribe from a hydropower company during his posting as SP, Kullu; last week he surrendered and was sent to jail. Around 33 IPS officers are facing trial on criminal charges in CBI cases. Last year, CBI started investigating two IPS officers of the Punjab cadre in connection with a `1.5 crore bribe after Punjab’s Chief Parliamentary Secretary Raj Khurana and senior officer Devinder Singh Bittu were arrested for graft.

Tomin Thachankary, an IPS officer and former Inspector General of Kerala, has brought much shame to the government after being involved in controversies. Thachankary, who was appointed as the Marketfed MD by the UDF government, was placed under suspension this year soon after the appointment was made. The suspension came after the Union Home Ministry directed the state government to initiate immediate dis ciplinary action against him. The ministry had written to the government that Thachankary had violated service rules as he visited people, including those who allegedly violated IT rules, and even his hotel bill was paid by them.

It was the V S Achuthanandan led LDF government that first suspended Thachankary from the Kannur Range Inspector General post after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) acted against him. The charge against Thachankary was that he went on a foreign trip without getting the mandatory permission. He had also faced an NIA probe on his alleged meeting with terrorists, accused of es caping the police net in Kerala and hiding in the Gulf in 2010.

Last year, the UDF government had reinstated Thachankary in service after the suspension period expired. Soon, the LDF came out against the government with Opposition Leader Achuthanandan alleging that Chief Minister Oommen Chandy
had violated the swearing-in pledge by reinstating a tainted official to service. He also demanded that Thachankary should be terminated from service. Based on home ministry’s direction, the UDF government suspended him this year.

Thachankary was involved in several controversies. One such controversy is related to the filing of application for renewing his passport at the Regional Passport Office in Kochi. He had suppressed certain information pertaining to his profession and had stated that he was not a public servant. He had also said in the application that no cases were registered against him when he was facing an NIA probe.

Way back in 1991, he was charged of custodial torture when he was Assistant Superintendent of Police, Alappuzha. His gunman was held with costly electronic items at the Nedumbassery airport in 2002. An FIR was filed against Thachankary in 2007 for amassment of wealth to the tune of `90 lakh, disproportionate to his known sources of income.


Some comments


An upright, honest, strong civil servant is a rare and Endangered species. 
(Ram Gulrajani ramgulrajani@gmail.com)

As rare and endangered as a virgin in a brothel.

What 'Steel Frame' are we talking about? ICS was also called steel frame because we the slaves were just not allowed to question what those royal minions did, with full backing of the army mind you. IAS called themselves a steel frame. But when Indira Gandhi imposed emergency and expected them to bend, she found them crawling. This is on record. In reality, they are sly cheap chaps who specialise in feathering their nests in cahoots with netas. An upright, honest, strong civil servant is a rare and endangered species.

KK Puchhi
kkpuchhi@yahoo.ca

1 comment:

  1. The system is now on the verge of collapse under its own weight of corruption. Now corrupt officers are rising steadily to hold positions of power. Thus such officers will suppress corrupt actions of others because they themselves have successfully climbed the ladder and reached the top that way. I have been silently working as a corruption crusader from within the Government. I have not allowed corrupt practices in the offices I have worked. but the path of honesty is full of humiliation. the standardized operating procedure is whoever raises an objection against corrupt deeds he is isolated. cases are searched against him, if they are unable to search any lapses then they invent cases and do not give the officer an opportunity to reply and unilaterally hang the officer. Anna has rightly said, Be prepared to face humiliation in your fight against corruption". we have had numerous instances in history when the righteous persons were eliminated by providing no opportunity for a fair trial. In India there is no democracy and we are heading towards anarchy where merit and honesty is persecuted and humiliated. while working as Head of the Department in the Directorate of Printing I took a principled stand against the Recruitment scam and the clandestine sale of excess govewrnment land belonging to Presses. The Secretary Urban Development, M Ramachandran cooked up 27 false allegations in file, never called for my comments and cut short my tenure. my request for a CBI inquiry into these allegations was suppressed. Such dishonest, manipulative and corrupt IAS officers need to be publicly tarred and feathered. It is only when such treatment is meted to dishonest IAS officers that corruption can be wiped out.
    MADHURI DABRAL
    madhuridabral@hotmail.com

    ReplyDelete