New Government has not yet come out with any decision policy on revamping of two vigilance establishments of the State. This is despite the fact that the Governor during his meeting with these organizations had stressed upon the need of activating vigilance in a befitting manner so that corruption in administration is stamped out. He had issued various instructions to the Vigilance Commission asking it to proceed expeditiously with the accountability of alleged cases. What has happened to that is not the point. The point is that on the one hand, there is huge cry against rampant corruption in the State administration and Government’s assurances that all efforts would be made to stamp it out. On the other hand, the Government does not provide vigilance organizations with wherewithal so that these can expeditiously process the cases and bring the accused to book. The State Vigilance Organization is under a cloud that its functioning is questionable. (SVO), which is vested with the powers to investigate the cases pertaining to charges of graft against public servants and public men, produced during six months challans in only five FIR cases against the officers of Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution, Labour and Employment, Roads & Buildings, Revenue and Finance Departments. One case was registered in 2010 while as three others in 2012 and 1 in 2013.
Out of 503 cases pending trial in the courts of law, 17 cases were decided between July 2014 to December 2014 and 486 cases are still pending trial. Out of 17 decided cases, 12 ended in acquittal mainly due to shortcomings in the SVO investigations and 5 cases concluded in conviction. This figure work shows that the snails-pace processing of alleged cases of corruption may not augur well for the hopes that corruption will be eliminated from State administration that soon unless some drastic revamping of the vigilance establishment is introduced.
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