Can a retired government employee receiving monthly pension in his bank account not be tracked? If a response by the Minor Irrigation Department to the House Committee on Assurances is to be believed, some retired officials, who are accused in a ₹3.36-crore scam in Kanakapura back in 1994, have not been issued notice since their addresses are not available.
The alleged scam is 23 years old, and the then Minor Irrigation Minister had assured the legislature of a Lokayukta probe, but there has been no progress in the case. Of the 27 officials accused of having committed irregularities, civil cases were filed against 10 in 2012 and the Lokayukta was asked to investigate.
This case is among the many alleged corruption cases where the government — on the floor of the legislature — assured its members of action against erring officials, but not much happened afterwards.
A letter to Legislative Council chairman D.H. Shankaramurthy by the committee chairman, Basavaraj Horatti, has exposed several such cases pending for years even though the government of the day had promised action. “It is a simple fact that pensioners have to issue address proof once in six months... yet [the departments have] said the officials’ addresses have not been found,” the letter said.
Similarly, in the case of the collapse of the Mini-Vidhana Soudha at Nanjangud in 1985 just before its inauguration, the Lokayukta, which probed the incident, had filed a B-report closing the case in 2014. “The probe by the agency was not conducted properly, the committee has sought the probe report,” Mr. Horatti said in his letter.
Listing 13 scams running into several crores of rupees, he said they were not investigated properly. “These cases show that departments have not conducted probes properly or action has not been taken to fix responsibility on officials, and recovery procedures have not been initiated. It has also been found that the departments have not given proper documents to the Lokayukta or the court,” the letter said.
Status unclear
In another case where the then CM had made an assurance in 2004, after a departmental inquiry found irregularities in town and city municipal councils, Mr. Horatti said the file’s status was not clear. An informal note by the Urban Development Department said the file was not with it since it had been given to the Lokayukta.
“However, there is no word about why the file was not available or if the file was missing or has been lost,” he said, adding that the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms secretary did not answer any of the questions posed by the committee members. “In fact, the committee now does not know whom to contact since the DPAR secretary confessed that departmental heads had not replied to his letters on the same,” the letter said.
Mr. Horatti further stated that in nearly 90% of the corruption cases, it was found that action against the accused official was deliberately delayed till his retirement or death. Though the Karnataka Civil Services Rules clearly state that action cannot be initiated against an official four years after he retires from service, the committee found that in some cases, files were moved for 10 to 15 years, enabling the erring official to escape, the MLC said.
