Times of India: New Delhi: Wednesday, March 26, 2014.
Facing
roadblocks to his crusade against corrupt public servants, whistleblower Sanjiv
Chaturvedi Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer has written to the Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh seeking action against certain PMO officials who are
allegedly protecting powerful Congress politicians and bureaucrats of B S
Hooda-led Haryana government by not sharing information under transparency law.
Chaturvedi
alleged that the Prime Minister Office (PMO) officials are concealing certain
information which is directly and indirectly linked to the 'proposed' CBI probe
into the multi-crore plantation scam in the state unearthed by him during his
posting in Haryana in 2009.
The IFoS
officer, currently posted here as chief vigilance officer at AIIMS, had sought
these information from the PMO under the RTI Act which, he claimed, would go a
long way in fixing responsibility of politicians and bureaucrats in many cases
of corruption in Haryana.
The specific
information, sought by him, pertained to documents and file noting relating to
meeting of officers of ministries of personnel and environment that had taken
place in the PMO on the issue of recommending a CBI inquiry into the plantation
scam.
Unable to get
the information, he went on to appeal before the first appellate authority
under the transparency law. Though the authority had in November last year
directed the PMO to provide Chaturvedi the relevant information, he has so far
not been lucky in getting those details.
In his letter
to the Prime Minister on March 10, the Haryana-cadre IFoS of 2002 batch,
Chaturvedi, said, "This is very unfortunate situation where officers of
your own office are involved in blatant violation of one of the flagship
legislations (RTI Act) of your tenure, which has always been projected by your
good-self as the most significant achievement of your government".
Without
taking names of public servants, he alleged - in this two-page letter - that
only motive of these officers (of the PMO) appeared to somehow protect the
corrupt politicians and bureaucrats of the Haryana government.
"However,
in the process, these officers of your esteemed office have simply made a
mockery of the RTI Act, 2005, for which, they should be properly
punished", said Chaturvedi in his letter to the PM which he claimed to
have written in his "private capacity as citizen of India".
Besides
demanding inquiry against concerned PMO officials, Chaturvedi has also
forwarded his letter to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) seeking
immediate protection for himself under the statutory provisions related to
protection of whistleblowers.
Chaturvedi
had exposed the scam while he was posted as divisional forest officer in
Jhajjar in January, 2009. He had detected that the fund from international
donor agencies was allegedly embezzled in the state in the name of plantation.
He had blown the lid off the entire irregularities when he found that the
plantation existed only on papers.
The ministry
of environment and forest (MoEF) had in its inquiry also found the irregularities
and expressed it to be a fit case which can be probed by the CBI. The ministry
had in its inquiry in 2010 even named certain bureaucrats and politicians in
Haryana as being involved in the scams and harassment of the whistleblower.
Chaturvedi
had subsequently in November, 2012 moved the Supreme Court to implement the
ministry's inquiry report and order a CBI inquiry into the matter. The state
government has, however, recently filed a petition before the high court for
quashing the inquiry report.
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