The Hindu: New Delhi: Tuesday,
January 28, 2014.
DoPT granted
sanction to prosecute 19 IAS officers for corruption during last four years,
according to information accessed under RTI
Corruption
cases against 15 officers of the Indian Administrative Service are pending with
the Department of Personnel and Training, which is responsible for granting
investigative agencies the sanction to prosecute IAS officers facing corruption
charges.
According to
information provided by the DoPT which comes under the Ministry of Personnel,
Public grievances and Pensions the department received proposals of sanction
for prosecution of 34 officers in 59 corruption cases from various investigative
agencies/state governments between 2010 to 2013.
Out of these,
sanction for prosecution of 19 IAS officers was granted in 33 cases under the
Prevention of Corruption Act 1988.
The
department refused sanction to prosecute five IAS officers and returned four
proposals relating to two officers who had retired.
Sanction to
prosecute 15 other officers in 17 cases is still pending with the DoPT
according to official information accessed under the Right to Information Act
by Indore-based RTI activist Anand Rai.
The pending
cases include IAS officers Arvind Joshi and Tinu Joshi from Madhya Pradesh,
facing charges of amassing assets disproportionate to their income. The case of
the officer couple had come to light in 2011 after raids by the Income Tax
department revealed they had accumulated assets worth Rs. 360 crore.
The maximum
number of officers, against whom sanction for prosecution was sought, are from
the Madhya Pradesh cadre (7; 3 granted) followed by Andhra Pradesh (6; 1
granted).
However, when
it comes to maximum cases, Orissa cadre (15) leads all other states thanks to
IAS officer Vinod Kumar, against whom sanction was sought in 12 cases of
corruption, two of which are pending.
Orissa is
followed by Madhya Pradesh (10), Andhra Pradesh (8), Jharkhand (5) and West
Bengal and Uttar Pradesh (3 each) in the number of cases of corruption where
sanction was sought.
Officers for
whom sanction for prosecution was refused include Subhash Chand Ahluwalia (HP),
presently posted as Media advisor-cum-Principal Private Secretary to the
Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh.
Sanction was
also refused for prosecuting another officer from the HP cadre, Sanjay Gupta,
who interestingly had probed a land grab scam against Virbhadra Singh and his
family in 2002.
Other
officers for whom sanction was refused include V.P. Baligar from Karnataka and
Raghav Chandra and Chaturbhuj Singh from the Madhya Pradesh cadre.
The Madhya
Pradesh Lokayukta had asked the DoPT to grant sanction to prosecute Mr. Chandra
presently Additional Secretary in the union ministry of agriculture in a
multi-crore land scam in Katni district, following a Supreme Court order which
upheld the findings of a special Lokayukta court against the officer.
The list
includes one officer each from the Rajasthan cadre--Ravi Shankar
Shrivastava--and Jammu and Kashmir cadre--Basheer Khan. Sanction to prosecute
these officers was granted by the DoPT in 2011 and 2013 respectively.
.JPG)
.JPG)
