Retired IAS babus make beeline to head "toothless" anti-corruption watchdog Gujarat Vigilance Commission

Four retired bureaucrats of the Gujarat government – Haribhai Patel, HK Dash, Rajesh Kishore and SK Nanda – are said to have made the beeline to head a state organization which is long considered toothless, Gujarat Vigilance Commission (GVC). Patel retired from the IAS in 2014, Dash and Kishore in 2015, and Nanda more recently, in February 2016.

“They have applied for the top GVC post, often used as a sanctuary for high-profile IAS officials who feel dissatisfied”, a senior official in the state government said. “The state home department will decide on whom to choose from among them.”

SK Nanda

Patel retired as state commercial tax commissioner, Dash and Kishore retired while on deputation to Delhi, and Nanda – who was refused chief secetaryship because of his alleged closeness to Congress politicians – last served as chairman and managing director of the state-run Gujarat State Finance Corporation.
A commission, which is supposed to look into complaints – including those received from individuals – of misappropriation by state officials, it is currently headless. At present, additional chief secretary, home, PK Taneja, a serving IAS bureaucrat, is heading the organization as additional charge.
Having recommendatory powers, the GVC website seeks the cooperation of all “right thinking people” eliminate the scourge of corruption by making complaints. “Any member of the public can lodge a complaint with the GVC of those relating to malpractices, misconduct or corruption in public services relating to officers/employees of Gujarat government”, it says.

Ashok Narayan

The website shows that the GVC has released its annual report – which is generally a compilation of the number of complaints it received over the year – till 2013. However, it has not made public annual reports for 2014 and 2015 for unspecified reasons.
The GVC has no powers to begin legal action in case substance is found in the complaint. It makes recommendations, which have to be implemented by the concerned departments. “Therefore, the applicant should find out further progress in the matter from the concerned authorities”, the GVC website says.
Ironically, the GVC has powers to take “appropriate legal action” against an ordinary application, in case the complaint she or he has made is found to be “false.” The website quotes a Gujarat government order in an order warning complainants regarding this so that they refrain from indulging in what it calls “falsehood.”
The recommendations it can make include starting a departmental inquiry against an official, prosecution in case of there is an “element of fraud/misappropriation”, and suspension and transfer to “non-sensitive posts” to facilitate an inquiry.

HN Chhibbar

Even its recommendations have remained on paper. An inquiry was instituted against IAS bureaucrat HN Chhibbar on the last date of his retirement, November 30, 2011, despite a clear-cut GVC recommendation, which insists such act of chargesheeting officialson the last day should be “avoided”.
Chhibbar, it is widely known, was asked by the chief minister’s office to dig out facts to persecute Congress politician Arjun Modhwadia when he was district collector, Porbandar. Failing to find none, he instead found a BJP leader, Babu Bokhiriya, a Cabinet minister in the current Gujarat government under Anandiben Patel, was involved in a mining scam.
Ashok Narayan, a Gujarat cadre IAS bureaucrat, who failed to be state chief secretary despite being the senior most, is known to have been appointed Gujarat vigilance commissioner in 2003 in controversial circumstances. “It's a toothless body. They don’t give us any powers. What’s the use of these inquiries?”, he reportedly told a senior journalist in Gandhinagar.

Rajesh Kishore

Narayan had won the displeasure of the then chief minister Narendra Modi for refusing, as state home secretary, to give permission to the Gaurav Yatra ahead of the December 2002 Gujarat assembly elections. The Gaurav Yatra was a Modi effort propagate the “pride” of Gujarat against the backdrop of 2002 Gujarat riots.
He remained in office for five long years, and is known to have written several letters to the state government to make the vigilance commission an effective body with semi-judicial powers, but to no avail. Given extension every six months, Narayan was succeeded by former chief secretary Manjula Subramaniam in 2008.

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog