From October 30 to November 5, J&K government has announced to celebrate Vigilance Awareness Week as is happening across the country.
According to the government several strategies have been adopted by the Government to fight corruption and to educate the general public about its perils.
Observance of Vigilance Awareness Week remains one of the primary tools of preventive vigilance with the focus on building awareness and re-affirming the commitment of everyone to uphold integrity in public governance. Vigilance Awareness Week is observed every year to commemorate the birthday of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
The focus areas of the celebrations is to bring greater awareness on complaints under Public Interest Disclosure and Protection of Informers and conduct Special Clearance Campaign for clearing all outstanding vigilance matters.
Many outreach programmes and activities have been planned regarding the six preventive vigilance measures that are to be taken up as focus areas during the period
During the week, employees are expected to be administered an integrity pledge. The steps are welcome. It will basically raise awareness regarding corruption.
Beyond doubt, corruption eats into the innards of a nation and is a debilitating social cancer which spares no one. There are numerous reasons, some of them well documented, as to why corruption flourishes. However, failure by some key institutions to bring to a close case plays an important part.
There are still FIRs starting from 1998 onwards registered under the Prevention of Corruption Act where challans have not been presented till date. The allegations are of forgery, bribery, misuse of government money, fictitious withdrawals from the treasury, embezzlement of government money, disbursement of loans without proper documents, allotment of works without tendering process, possession of assets disproportionate to known sources of income, fabrication or fictitious bills for the purchases, etc. The allegations of corruption there are allegations under provisions of penal code also in most of the FIRs.
Many of the accused named in the FIRs are government officials. They may be either under suspension or may be getting all benefits despite the pendency of criminal cases against them.
There are timelines provided in legislation for the presentation of the charge sheet, otherwise, an accused is entitled to default bail. Any delay by the Investigating Agency in not completing investigation of the cases registered is seriously impacting the justice delivery system as the guilty are not being brought to court for trial even after decades of registration of cases against them, thus observed the J&K’s top court.
While reasons for the delay could be plenty, the government should ensure the monitoring system for investigations in the FIRs.
