CVC plugs loop holes to net corrupt secretaries

DoPT corrigendum restores vigilance watchdog's jurisdiction

PTI | March 29, 2010



The Central Vigilance Commission has tightened its grip over secretaries to the government of India as it has got the Department of Personnel and Training to issue a corrigendum about its jurisdiction. Some officials were making an attempt to escape a CVC probe into complaints against them, but the vigilance watchdog has come to know of the trick to bypass it and forced the DoPT to issue a corrigendum on March 8 removing the complaints received by the CVC from the purview of the group set up to examine and take appropriate action. It got revised the order issued on January 14 setting up a separate mechanism to deal with such complaints on the ground that "frivolous or vague complaints are also given importance" and so better to get them scrutinised by a group of secretaries headed by the cabinet secretary "carefully and appropriate action taken based on their gravity, seriousness and the nature of the allegations." The CVC took the stand that the mechanism already exists in the form of its constitution by the government and hence there is no need for the cabinet secretary to have a separate mechanism and that too only for the senior bureaucrats of secretary rank in the government of India. The January 14 order said: "Complaints against Secretaries to the Government of India, whether pseudonymous or otherwise, received by the Cabinet Secretariat or the CVC or the DOPT or the Prime Minister's Office, will be first scrutinised by the group headed by the Cabinet Secretary." The corrigendum drops the words "or the CVC" and makes it clear that the group will scrutinise any complaint received by the CVC only if it is forwarded to it by the CVC.

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