Khattar govt showcases anti-corruption drive with action against senior officers

The ACB claims to have caught several officials “red-handed” and seems intent on pursuing cases to their logical conclusion by seeking permission to prosecute them under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

With action against officers of this level rare, sources said that at least two senior IAS officers who are among those facing corruption charges have approached the state government challenging the ACB’s action. Sources said the government is examining the contentions of the officers.

In February this year, the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government had changed the name of the State Vigilance Bureau to Anti Corruption Bureau. It falls under the Vigilance Department headed by the Chief Minister.

The government had followed this up with a direction to crack down on corrupt officials and to take stern action against them in a time-bound manner. Khattar is fond of saying: “Eradicating corruption from its roots is no less than a ‘junoon’ for me… Corruption is a fight for the future of youths; we have to jointly fight it.”

The move of the government came against the backdrop of the Opposition’s accusations that the state government was not doing enough to curtail corruption.

As per figures released by the ACB, in 2022, the bureau registered 246 corruption cases, the highest in 10 years. ACB Director General Shatrujeet Kapur stated, “The Bureau conducted 170 raids in 2022 and recovered Rs 6,21,70,230 on the spot and after searching the properties of the accused people… A total of 193 government servants, including 27 gazetted officers as well as 27 private individuals, were arrested… On an average, 18 public servants were arrested on corruption charges every month in 2022.”

Among the officers against whom the ACB has sought permission to act is Haryana Resident Commissioner D Suresh, a Principal Secretary-level IAS officer, in connection with a Gurgaon plot allotment case of 2019, which allegedly caused loss to the government exchequer.

Suresh has moved a petition before the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking quashing of the three inquiry reports against him.

Incidentally, Suresh’s wife Kanthi D Suresh — the editor-in-chief of the Gurgaon-based digital sports news channel Power Sportz TV – has approached the Haryana government seeking an FIR against a few ACB officials for “threatening her staffer” and for “blackmail, forgery and impersonation”.

The office of her sports channel had been raided and a mobile phone of an employee seized.

The ACB has denied the charges.

Suresh told The Indian Express that he had passed “a quasi-judicial order on the directions of the High Court”, “as per my wisdom and experience”. “My order is right now sub-judice in the High Court. When an order isn’t yet implemented, besides also being appealable, the Vigilance Bureau stating there is loss to HSVP (Haryana Shehri Vikash Pradhikaran) is not only incompetence but also a dangerous trend of attaching criminality to officers discharging their official duties.”

In April, the ACB lodged an FIR against Commissioner-rank officer Vijay Dahiya for alleged bribery. IAS officers Sonal Goel and Anita Yadav are facing an ACB probe over an alleged multi-crore scam in the Faridabad Municipal Corporation. And this week, the state police arrested an IAS officer, Dharmendra Singh, a former Sonipat Municipal Corporation Commissioner, in a bribery case.

Anil Nagar, an HCS official and then deputy secretary of the Haryana Public Service Commission, was arrested in November 2021 reportedly while accepting a bribe of more than Rs 1 crore at his office.

A section of the bureaucracy has questioned why only officials in the civil administration — as opposed to IPS officers — are being targeted, and alleged that “overwhelmingly those who belong to weaker sections and agrarian communities are facing action”.

Some officers facing action have also claimed that, like Suresh, cases against them relate to exercise of their quasi-judicial powers.

A senior IAS officer, who has over two decades of experience in the civil administration, said: “Officers enjoy immunity in exercise of their quasi-judicial powers. If someone has some grievance, he or she can approach the authorities to challenge the order.”

Dismissing such arguments, a senior ACB officer said: “There can’t be two sets of law, one for ordinary citizens and another for IAS officers. We seek permission to probe the role of an IAS officer only when we get evidence of his or her involvement in a particular case.”

Recently, a Panchkula court rejected the bail application of one of the officers, Vijay Dahiya, saying: “As of now, the material placed on record before the Court prima facie shows active complicity of…(Dahiya)”.

Haryana BJP chief spokesperson Sanjay Sharma said the actions against senior officials shows the Khattar government’s zero tolerance towards corruption, be it matters of government jobs, transfers or tenders. “Earlier, only junior employees or officers were arrested. But now the government is taking action against even senior officers, including IAS officers,” he said.

Haryana Congress president Udai Bhan dismissed the action against officers as “isolated” and for “publicity”. “You go to any office, corruption has increased three-four fold,” Udai Bhan said. “Had the liquor scam or mining scam taken place if they were actually fighting against corruption? Not only this, papers for government recruitment exams have leaked as many as 32 times. Have they taken any action?”