With their colleagues in the line of fire as the Delhi Government looks into the alleged scam in hiring of water tankers, officials of the Delhi Jal Board were a dejected lot last week.
DJB chairperson Kapil Mishra had recommended that an FIR be filed against former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, who was the chairperson of the Board in 2012 when around 400 new tankers were hired. According to an inquiry set up by Mr. Mishra in June, the project cost the DJB Rs.400 crore and was full of procedural lapses.
Though the report didn't mention any officials, or Ms. Dikshit for that matter, by name, the designations of the engineers responsible for the project made it pretty clear who they were.
Senior officials said the inquiry was inconclusive and since the engineers 'accused' were not given a hearing, it was incomplete as well.
"An FIR will lead to unnecessary harassment. There was no criminal intent made out in the inquiry, at best there may be procedural lapses, which can be dealt with departmentally," said a senior DJB official.
Another official said the inquiry would have an inadvertent effect on work as engineers would be wary of undertaking any job for fear of a future inquiry.
"Sometimes, we have to find innovative solutions to problems and try different ideas when projects don't go as planned. Now, no one will want to sign files or commit to any project if they think every move will be questioned later," said the official.
Government counsel and public prosecutors, waiting for remuneration for their work for the past several months, will shortly get their dues with the Delhi High Court directing the Law Department of Delhi government last week to take prompt action to make payment of all the pending bills. The Court has pulled up the government for not complying with its directions passed earlier in this regard.
The High Court has been monitoring the issue of non-payment of salaries to government counsel during the hearing of a case it took up suo motu in 2009 over the slow pace of work in the trial courts of the Capital.
A Division Bench of the High Court has directed the Delhi Chief Secretary to file an affidavit explaining the steps for paying the dues to government counsels and clarifying his stand for non-implementation of the Court’s directions. All the dues have to be cleared by this coming Wednesday.
The High Court had earlier asked the Chief Secretary to look into the scope for providing a big office to the Additional Public Prosecutors with the facilities of computer, electronic library and stenographers on the Court premises to facilitate their efficient functioning.
Lawyers who have not been paid remuneration since long include those appearing in the Court for the Ministry of Home Affairs, Economic Offences Wing, Central Bureau of Investigation and Delhi government.
Known for accepting criticism without much ado, Tihar Jail authorities’ response to two prisoners being killed in a prison van was unusually aggressive. The institution, in news for all the wrong reasons over the last many months, hit back hard at anyone who blamed it for the gruesome incident.
As the blame game over the double murders ensued between the Delhi Police and the jail authorities, the latter openly took on the police’s Third Battalion, holding it solely responsible for not preventing the incident.
It picked out statements purportedly given by the battalion’s officers to the media and offered point-by-point rebuttals to them. And when a newspaper report suggested conspiracy by Tihar staff in the incident, it immediately sent out a rejoinder.
“We advised the police not to wash dirty linen in pubic. We have been accepting all criticism that come our way, but we will not hold ourselves back if blamed for someone else’s negligence,” said a senior Jail official.
While neither police, nor Tihar accepted the blame for the incident, it appears jail authorities had the last laugh when some policemen left the Third Battalion red-faced. Tasked with producing a Tihar prisoner in an Agra court, half-a-dozen policemen were apparently caught taking him out shopping there.
(Contributed by Damini Nath, Mohammad Iqbal and Shiv Sunny)
