“We are only 301 (people) at the Central Vigilance Commission and there are over 3,000 departments,” said Vigilance Commissioner R. Srikumar, lamenting about how understaffed the vigilance commission is despite the vastness of the ambit of its functions.
Speaking at a seminar on “Vigilance awareness” organised by the All India Council for Technical Education here on Friday, he gave an example of how difficult the situation is while addressing students from over 20 colleges: “Under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, there is the AICTE; under the AICTE there are private and government institutions. Corruption is there in the Indian Institutes of Technology also.”
Explaining the different forms of vigilance — preventive, proactive, predictive and participative, he stressed the need for a strong “whistleblower law”.
ADVERTISEMENT
“This is likely to be formed along with the Lokpal Bill,” he added.
Educating students about the vigilance commission’s Project VIGEYE (Vigilance Eye), a citizen-centric initiative where citizens can upload complaints on the website, he said that it could be more efficient if the vigilance commission had its “own BPO and KPO”.
To a student’s query on illegal donations being collected in colleges, Amit Khare, Joint Secretary of the Department of Higher Education, said that the problem was due to the shortage of seats on the supply side.
ADVERTISEMENT
Listing out some of the steps that had been taken by the government, he said, “The discretionary quota was recently abolished in the Kendriya Vidyalayas, to do away with favouritism.”
“The government is bringing in the national common entrance examination. There is also a law before Parliament to ban unfair practices such as collecting capitation fee and reduce discretion wherever possible,” Mr. Khare added.
He said that technology can be used to bring in more transparency and cited the example of some universities uploading the students’ answer scripts and the answer key on the universities’ website for the students to compare.