Times
of India: New Delhi: Monday, 11 August 2014.
Is corruption
rising in public offices? Complaints to the Central Vigilance Commission appear
to suggest so. Complaints by whistleblowers have increased from 625 in 2013 to
470 in just the last six months, according to data accessed through RTI.
The highest
number of complaints is from the railways, followed by banks and the income tax
department.
The
information was made public by the CVC in response to an RTI query filed by
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)'s Venkatesh Nayak. The total number
of complaints between 2012 and 2014 is about 1,900.
The CVC has
received 470 complaints up to June 2014. In 2012, the commission received 805
complaints which dropped by 23% to 625 fresh complaints in 2013.
Analysis
reveals that only 10% of the cases reported under the whistleblower's policy,
also called the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection for Informants
(PIDPI) resolution, were sent for investigation and reporting. In 2012, 169 of
the total 805 complaints or 21% were sent for investigation.
In 2013, the
CVC wound up only 6 of the 730 cases (these include fresh complaints and
complaints from previous years) as "requiring no action". Data for
the last eight months of 2012 shows that only one case was disposed of as
requiring no action. In sharp contrast, the commission disposed of 44% of the
cases (that is 178 of 404 cases) as requiring no action.
Nayak said
there was absence of information given by the public authority on criminal
action taken on the complaints.
"The
public in general and most importantly, the whistleblowers themselves have the
right to know the reasons for this kind of disposal. I had specifically asked
in my RTI application reasons for closure of cases in 2012. They did not
furnish this data. There is all the more reason why there must be transparency
about such cases because only then whistleblowers will have confidence that
their cases were inquired into seriously," he said.
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