A K Bhattacharya: A case for prosecution

RAISINA HILL

Remember C K Jaffer Sharief? A Congress politician, Sharief was the railway minister in the P V Narasimha Rao government. Though controversial, he was one minister whose portfolio was not changed even once during the five years of the Narasimha Rao regime.

Sharief's name figures in a list of 65 people against whom criminal prosecution cannot be started because the government or the competent authorities have not given their approval.

This is a list recently compiled by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and it shows how the government is dragging its feet on sanctioning prosecution against people whom the investigating agencies have found to be involved in a corruption case.

The request for launching prosecution against Sharief was made in 2000. So, the request has been pending for more than five years. And guilty of sitting on the proposal are both the Vajpayee government and the Manmohan Singh government.

It is possible that both the governments have not found the case against Sharief strong enough to justify prosecution. In that case, why can't the case be dropped altogether from the CVC's list? Or is it that governments are reluctant to launch such proceedings against politicians? And that the Manmohan Singh government is no different.

The case of the remaining 64 people, where sanction for prosecution is pending, is even more curious. The request for prosecution is pending for about a year in most cases. In other words, most of these requests for prosecution were made after the Manmohan Singh government was formed. And the finance ministry accounts for as many as 45 of these officers.

These are officers belonging to the income-tax, customs and excise departments of the finance ministry. That leaves only 12 officers of the Central Water Commission, two from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and five from the state government of Bihar and the Lakshadweep administration.

It's not as if the investigating agencies and the CVC are tardy in taking action when the government allows them to launch prosecution against officials involved in corruption cases.

In its latest monthly report, the CVC has indicated that it imposed penalties on as many as 73 officers. But even here the break-up of the departments that the penalised officers belong to makes an interesting reading.

As many as 32 officers, on whom penalties ranging from reduction in salary or in rank have been imposed, are from public sector banks and insurance companies. The Delhi Development Authority, the Delhi Jal Board and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi account for seven officers.

Fifteen officers are from the Indian Railways, while the number of penalised officers belonging to central ministries is no more than 13. It's true that as many as 15 of these officers were actually dismissed or compulsorily retired from service.

But what is equally clear is that Central government officers penalised in corruption cases are not large in number, particularly when you compare them with those belonging to banks, insurance companies or other commercial undertakings.

What does this tell about the Manmohan Singh government? In the January-June 2005 period, the CVC had advised prosecution against 54 officers. And the government sanctioned prosecution for only 47 cases.

This means the backlog of uncleared prosecution cases only increased in the first six months of 2005. And this happened inspite of the Supreme Court guideline that all requests for prosecution should be dealt with within three months by the competent authorities.

Clearly, the government has failed to comply with this requirement as well. Worse, the Manmohan Singh government came with the promise of cleansing the administration by weeding out corrupt officials from the system.

Coming as it did from Manmohan Singh, it enjoyed a certain degree of credibility and expectations of quick action against corrupt officials and early disposal of corruption cases had risen.

Manmohan Singh's intentions may still be as honest as they were when he took office in May 2004 but the ground reality shows that his government has a long way to go to meet the people's expectations of cleansing the administration. The CVC's latest report explains why Singh's admirers may still be disappointed.