Team Herald
PANJIM: In a shocking revelation that will force Goans to question how much can we trust our government servants, Herald has found out that over 1,408 cases of complaints against serving officers lie pending with Directorate of Vigilance since 2001.
Of these, 453 cases are against gazetted officers and 955 against non-gazetted officers and others in various departments, semi-government and autonomous bodies under government of Goa. What is shocking is that this is a gross violation of Central Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1965 that lays down a specific period of six months in which a complaint against an official should be investigated and disposed.
Goa government’s Vigilance Department has been receiving complaints of corruption since 2001 but the culture of just registering complaints and not disposing of the cases nor taking any action started the same year. Between 2001 and 2010, 476 complaints were filed against Goa government officials yet not a single one was disposed. Thereafter the maximum number of cases disposed in a year was 6% in 2012. Last year a meagre 0.31% of the cases were disposed.
Statute Violated
Last year, Government of India’s Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had changed an over 50-year-old rule whereby a deadline of six months was fixed to complete probes in corruption cases involving its employees. The decision was taken to speed up the investigation in various cases as decisions were pending in most of them for quite a long time. The amendment is crucial also from Goa government’s point of view where a staggering 87% of corruption cases against government employees, gazetted and non-gazetted, have been pending.
Goa government follows the same Central Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1965 as the other States of India. The new amendment mandates that the Inquiring Authority should conclude the inquiry and submit its report within a period of six months. The RTI expose by M A Bosco Coutinho reveals that even though a year has passed since the rules were amended, the status of cases disposed remains dismally low. This despite the fact that the amendment of CCS (CCA) Rules also allows an extension for a period not exceeding six months for any good and sufficient reasons to be recorded. Vigilance probably has no good reason to do that.
The Infamous Departments
Till the end of April last year with 323 complaints, Directorate of Panchayats’ non-gazetted officials had the maximum cases of corruption registered against them. Of these almost half the cases are awaiting inquiry reports. North Goa Collectorate with 61 pending cases, Directorate of Municipal Administration with 55 cases and Public Works Department with 54 pending cases of corruption constitute the list amongst non-gazetted officers.
Amongst the Departments having most corruption cases against gazetted officers are Directorate of Municipal Administration with 62 pending cases followed by Collectorate of North Goa with 56, Collectorate of South Goa with 28 and PWD with 28 cases.
Clearly, it is the biggest from North Goa Collectorate (home to Mopa, the influential coastal belt), DMA (that overlooks major infrastructure in urban bodies) and PWD which are the usual suspects in corruption who have cases filed but neither investigated nor disposed against them.
With a staggering nine tenth of corruption cases in the State still not disposed for almost two decades, the question that also begs an answer is that officials are being promoted and rewarded despite not being given a clean chit.
