RTIGATE-A 15 YEAR OLD SCAM

 

RTIGATE-A 15 YEAR OLD SCAM

P M Ravindran, raviforjustice@gmail.com

 

It is 15 years since the Right to Information Act was introduced as another piece of legislation, only to cheat the masses once again. Touted as a sunshine act, as a panacea for corruption and introduce accountability of the public servants to the public, it has grown into one of the biggest, yet unrecognized, scams over the last 15 years.

 

Before we proceed further, let us do some back of envelope calculations.

 

Each information commission is authorized one Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) and a maximum of 10 Information Commissioners (ICs). There is the Central Information Commission (Central IC) and 29 state information commissions (SICs) with say, an average of 6 ICs, including the CIC. That makes the total number of ICs, including the CICs, as 180.

 

Each information commissioner can dispose of, say, a very conservative 10 appeals per working day and there are 220 working days per year, then each IC is expected to clear 2200 appeals in a year. So, between all the ICs, in 15 years the number of appeals disposed of should be around 59,40,000.

 

The RTI Act provides for imposing a penalty @ Rs 250/- per day of delay in providing the information sought, subject to a maximum of Rs 25000/- on a defaulting Public Information Officer (PIO). Presuming that no appeal would have been filed unless there had been shortfalls in providing the complete information sought and that by the time an appeal is disposed of by an IC this maximum limit would have been reached the total penalty due would be a whopping Rs 148,500,000,000 (14,850 Cr).

 

Now consider the average cost, just in terms of his/her pay and perks only, to exchequer of an IC to be around Rs 3 lakhs per month till 7^th Central Pay Commission and 5 lakhs per month since 01 Jan 2016. That would be Rs 11,880,000,000 (1,188 Cr).

 

To my mind the total of the above figures, that is Rs 16,038 Crores is the total loss to the exchequer over the last 15 years. This does not include the cost of the establishment, that is the fixed and movable assets, the salary and allowances of the other employees, consumables etc.

 

Do I mean that all the 2^nd appeals were deserving the full penalty to be imposed? Yes, of course. Given that even in cases of decisions directing the defaulting Public Information Officers to provide information, the ICs have been delinquent in penalizing them shows the extent of arbitrariness, waywardness and corruption involved.

 

I, along with 12 activists, were put in the dock when we staged a protest outside the venue where the then CIC of Kerala SIC was to address a seminar on RTI. Obviously, the detention and prosecution were illegal and misuse of the authority by the police at the behest of the CIC. That aside, demands of the protesters were for the information commissions to stop:

 

-  denial of democratic rights of citizens

-  violation of laws

-  corruption

-  extravaganza

 

 

The issues highlighted included:

 

All public authorities including the Information Commission should disclose information as required by Sec 4(1)(b)

 

Collect the penalty prescribed by law for the delay in publishing the information

 

Dispose of the complaints and appeals received by the Commission in a time bound manner as prescribed by the law

 

Stop the misinformation being disseminated by the Commission

 

The Commission which has an air conditioned office, computers, luxury cars and more than the required number of employees should not claim that it has no facilities (the 4 commissioners who need 15 employees have 35, of the 1263 cases filed in the Commission between January 2006 and May 2007 only 649 have been disposed of, and the amount spent by the Commission during this period was Rs 2.5 crores of the tax payers’ money)

 

Stop spreading lies like some people are threatening the government employees in the name of the RTI Act

 

Isn’t the scope for misusing the law available only for the information commissioners? For example, to accept a bribe of Rs 15000/- from a defaulting public servant who should be penalized with Rs 25000/- and fail to penalize him is available only to the information commissioners.

 

The copy of the leaflet, in Malayalam, distributed during the protest on 18 Dec 2007, along with its translation in English, is available at 

https://www.slideshare.net/raviforjustice/rti-protest181207leafletmal-n-eng.

 

Horror of horrors, the situation has only gone from bad to worse over the years.

 

To elucidate further, even the information commissions have not complied with the mandated suo moto disclosures listed in Sec 4(1)(b).

 

At their website, http://keralasic.gov.in/, under Right to Information, Kerala SIC has only provided the details of their PIO and their First Appellate Authority (FAA).

 

Under Disclosures, there is a Menu where the 1^st option is Disclosure u/s 4(1)(b). Here what has been provided is a list under the heading Private Journey Payment (for the period 2011 June to 2014 July).

 

The Central IC, which had correctly disclosed this information, sub section wise, at their website in the early years, has now disclosed only partial information. For example, the details of employees and their monthly remuneration have not been disclosed as required by Sec 4(1)(b)(ix) and Sec 4(1)(b)(x) of the RTI Act. What has been left out is the exact number of employees in each category. And instead of the exact remuneration being given, only the levels as per the 7^th Central Pay Commission scales have been provided.  

 

While the Act has provided mandatory time frames for the PIOs and FAAs to reply and for the applicant to file appeals, it has not provided any time frame for the ICs to dispose of the appeals (as well as complaints) submitted to them. But there is a provision, and only one provision to Sec 7(1), which prescribes a priority for providing information. It says: where the information sought for concerns the life or liberty of a person, the same shall be provided within forty-eight hours of the receipt of the request. By extension, it follows that the appeals, including the 2^nd appeal, must be disposed of within 48 hours each. And, in the rest it must be on first come, first served basis. But even that is violated, as will be evident when I present data on disposal of cases.

Regarding disposal of cases, under the option ‘Orders’ in the main menu, the Kerala SIC has provided the information at its website under different years from 2010 to 2019 and another option ‘Orders in English’.

 

As on 30 Jul 2019, for 2019, the orders have been provided against various ICs as follows:

 

Vinson M Paul, CIC (For January to April 2019):

 

He had disposed of 312 cases between January and March 2019. And 32 in April 2019. To understand the arbitrary and wayward (not on first come first served basis) manner of disposal, the April data was analyzed, to co-relate the year, in which the application was originally submitted, with the appeals and complaints disposed of in that month. The result is:  

 

2^nd appeal       : 2012-3, 2013-9, 2018-10, 2019-1,    Total- 23

Complaints      : 2013-2, 2014-1, 2018-1, 2019-5,      Total- 09

 

The following are deficiencies noted in the above data made available:

 

-          Information about the disposals since May 2019 is not available.

-          The orders/decisions, themselves are not accessible in all cases. While the orders up to March 2019 appears as hyperlinks, for April 2019 it is just a list. But even in some random cases of these hyperlinks I have checked from the January list, some have returned the message ‘Forbidden. You don't have permission to access /images/stories/sic/decisions/orders2019/cic/ on this server.’

-          The orders have been uploaded in Word format and not Portable Document Format (PDF) and hence cannot be read unless the same fonts are installed in your system. This problem does not arise with PDF.

 

If this be the case of the CIC, the data about other ICs is even more shocking.

 

Vivekanandan, IC (Available for 2018 only.)

 

2^nd appeal       : 2016-6, 2017-5, 2018-2,                   Total- 13

Complaints      : 2013-6, 2014-2, 2017-3,                   Total- 11

 

Somanathan Pillai, IC (Available for 2019 only, not month wise but separately for Malayalam and English. The figures given below includes both)

 

2^nd appeal       : 2010-1, 11-1, 12-1, 13-4, 14-13, 16-1, 17-2, 18-14, 19-7,    Total- 44

Complaints      : 2010-6, 15-1, 17-3, 18-2, 19-3,                                             Total- 15

 

Sudhakaran, IC (Available for 2019 only.)

 

2^nd appeal       : 2015-8, 16-1, 17-3, 18-4,                  Total- 16

Complaints      : C: 2015-1, 18-1                                  Total- 02

 

Sreelatha, IC (For January and Feb 2019 only.)

 

2^nd appeal       : 2015-3, 17-5, 18-4,                           Total- 12

Complaints      : 2017-8, 18-3,                                     Total- 11

 

While Sudhakaran’s list of cases disposed have hyperlinks to the orders/decisions which are in PDF the list of cases disposed of by the others are just that, mere lists with no access to the decisions themselves.

 

It may be noted that while the figures about disposal do convey the casual approach of the ICs, the perusal of the orders themselves would reveal the preposterous nature of the decisions. When the decisions are devoid of reasons the least that should be obvious should be the dereliction of duty and/or incompetence of the CIC. If anybody suspects corruption, they cannot also be blamed.

 

Another piece of information available at the website is that of the expenditure incurred by the Commission annually, for the period from 2005-06 to 2013-14. It has steadily increased from Rs 1.0127 Cr to 2.9474 Cr. No need to ask: what about the expenditures thereafter?

 

As per a list, updated on 11/10/2018, of 664 penalties imposed by the Commission, the first penalty, of Rs 3500/- was imposed by the Commission on 08/01/2007. The last, Rs 1000/- was imposed on 18/07/2018.

 

The total penalty imposed, as per the summary provided is: Rs 44,51,815/-; the total received is only Rs 28,56,353/- and the High Court, Kerala has stayed penalties totaling Rs 4,88,387/-. Again, no questions on the missing Rs 11,06,893/-.

 

Now, when penalized PIOs take up the matter with high courts they are required to do so in their own personal capacity. This is not only logically correct but has been held so by Punjab and Haryana High Court as per a report in the Indian Express, datelined 04 Nov 2010.

 

Since, the Information Commission must be a respondent in such cases, do the commissions keep a record of such cases? At least the Kerala SIC does not.

 

This is in violation of Sec 4(1)(a) of the RTI Act which mandates that ‘Every public authority shall maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and the form which facilitates the right to information under this Act.

 

In a similar issue, of maintaining a register to track compliance of their decisions, the Central IC had decided that a Register of Non Compliance will be opened, which will be processed by the Office of Secretary, CIC and on conclusion of the complaint, the complaint will either be closed or registered as a complaint for hearing under the appropriate sub sec. of Sec. 18(1) and proceeded upon by the Bench of the Information Commissioner concerned. (Refer decision dated 11/06/2009 in Commission in their case file no. CIC/WB/C/2008/00859.)

 

In a 5-part series on the subject ‘RTI: Exposing the traitors among public servants’ published here between 27 and 31 Mar 2018 the details of the RTI Act including its shortcomings, the lapses in implementation and the way forward had been analyzed.

 

Please read them at

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4626

 

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4627

 

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4628

 

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4629

 

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4630

 

There is one small but major change that has happened since then.

 

Through an amendment to the Act, published in the Gazette on 01 August 2019 and the rules published thereunder on 24 Oct 2019, the tenure and pay of the ICs, including the CICs have been changed.

 

Essentially, the tenure of all these public servants have been reduced to 3 years from 5 years.

 

The pay of the CIC of the Central IC has been reduced to Rs 2,50,000. Earlier it had been the same as that of the Chief Election Commissioner.

 

The pay of the ICs of the Central IC has been reduced to Rs 2,25,000. Earlier it had been the same as that of the Election Commissioner.

 

The pay of the CICs and ICs of the SICs have been fixed at Rs 2,25,000/-. Earlier it had been the same as that of an Election Commissioner and Chief Secretary to the State Government, respectively.

 

I have been maintaining that the job of an IC is simpler than that of a munsif in our judiciary. Hence even this level of pay is an avoidable drain on the exchequer.

 

But there has been severe criticism of this amendment from many RTI activists themselves. For example, Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, has commented in the Economic Times of 25 Oct 2019 (Govt notifies RTI rules; CIC tenure cut to 3 yrs, govt to decide salary, other perks) that ‘As the parity between the Information Commissions and the Election Commission of India has been downgraded to babu-level, it is highly unlikely that in a situation where the rule of law is not a very strongly embedded value in the bureaucracy, that senior babus in the administration will ever be hauled up before the Information Commissions for not complying with the provisions of the RTI Act’. Of course, everyone has a right to his opinion. But he seems to have forgotten that even P V Narasimha Rao, as the Prime Minister of this nation then, had been doing the rounds of trial courts at least in three cases in which he had been an accused- the Lakhubhai Pathak case, the JMM bribery case and the St Kitts case. (The analysis of these cases is itself an interesting study, but for a later occasion.)

 

Another report in the Print dated 21 May 2020 ( 21 of 29 state information commissions did not hold any RTI hearings during lockdown) The study by voluntary groups Satark Nagrik Sangathan and Centre for Equity Studies stated that only the Central IC and the SICs of Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Manipur, Punjab and Telangana had made provisions for taking up urgent matters or those related to life and liberty during the period. But then wasn’t the apex court itself among the first to decide that it was a non-essential service during the lockdown?

 

05 Aug 2020.

TO WRITE OR NOT TO WRITE...

 

TO WRITE OR NOT TO WRITE...

P M Ravindran, raviforjustice@gmail.com

 

Prudence dictates it is better to let sleeping dogs lie. But wisdom demands that the unpalatable and unpleasant, at least those in public domain, be discussed publicly and thrashed out in public interest.

 

On 04 Jul 2020, Hindustan Times carried a report under the heading ‘NSA Doval coordinated PM Modi’s surprise Nimu visit’. I was too shocked at the preposterousness of the suggestion implicit in the title and posted a comment thus:

 

I really don't understand what is there for NSA Doval to co-ordinate about the PM's visit to a military station. From the general reports appearing in the media involving Doval, it looks like there is more to it than meets the eye. Is there any effort to paint a larger than life size picture of Doval? Or, is it to reduce the PM to a puppet in the hands of Doval? Even worse, is it just to paint the armed forces as puppets of the same public servant? Otherwise, all that Doval had to do in this case was just inform the CDS that the PM would be visiting Leh on such and such date at such and such time. And the Services would have taken it on from there and done the job much, much better than Doval can even dream of.

 

Earlier in the film ‘Uri, the Surgical Strike’ too Doval is shown to be the brain behind the successful military operation.

 

And now, the usually unreliable Malayalam visual and print media is also seen going gaga over Doval, the Indian James Bond, leading the investigations in the gold-smuggling-through- diplomatic bag case. With the investigations leading to terror funding, and may be their mouth pieces too, one can imagine the motivation for such blurbs.

 

I have nothing to do with Doval, and even if there is, it just doesn’t matter a fig. But where was this Doval before he became the National Security Advisor under Prime Minister Modi? He had been a member of the Indian Police Service and retired with no obvious fanfare. Had he left any lasting impression in the performance of the police as a service organization? Like Kiran Bedi did, with her reforms in Tihar Jail?  

 

Doval draws comparison T N Seshan, a member of the Indian Administrative Service who went on to become the Cabinet Secretary without much ado. But once he got appointed as the Chief Election Commissioner, he did try to cleanse the election system. Notable among those efforts was the introduction of Identity Cards for voters. Unfortunately, the then Chief Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav, of Bihar had openly said that he would not implement it in the State under his charge. But what has happened there after? Even today this identity card is not the only identification document required to cast vote. And, in the last elections in Kerala, to the Legislative Assembly, there were complaints of impersonation. But that is not all.

 

Driven by apex court orders, the candidates are also submitting information about their criminal records while filing their application. But does that information reach the electorate in time? An NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms have been trying to compile this information of candidates, at least of important constituencies, and publishing them for the information of the voters. But even while the effort is tremendous, for a small NGO, they are less than the proverbial drop in the ocean for what needs to be done and could be achieved.

 

I remember my own case of getting my Voter’s Identity Card just 10 days before the elections in 1999 and finding my name missing from the electoral roll when I landed up at the polling booth. Complaints to the concerned authorities had remained unanswered. Interestingly, some similarly placed citizens had approached the High Court; but the court had dismissed the petition with the observation that even if they had voted it would not have made any difference to the result. The court had obviously forgotten that it was not the result of the election that was being challenged but the denial of the fundamental right of citizens to choose, through ballots, their representatives in law making bodies.

 

There are laid down procedures to remove names from an electoral roll. And the public servants who had violated it had also not been made accountable for their sins of omissions and commissions.

 

Much later, I had also read a report of a court observing that those who had not voted had no right to complain against the government.

 

Now, here is the situation after the implementation of the Right to Information Act.

 

Post the 2014 General Election, I had sought some information related to the activities of the Anti-Defacement Squads constituted by the District Election Officer (DEO), their constitution, deployment, tasks, cost etc. Among the information obtained was the cost of defacement required to be recovered from the candidates/political parties. This was as under:

 

UDF: Rs 1,10,100/-; LDF: 1,18,000/-; BJP: 42,100/-; Welfare Party: 1650/-; SDPI: 2670/-; BSP: 1142/-; AAP: 1050/-; Virendra Kumar: 2100/-. Total: Rs 2,78,812/-

 

Post the 2019 General Election too I had sought similar information plus the following information in the context of the earlier dues:

 

(a)    The date(s) when the payment(s) were made and copies of the proofs of payment.

 

(b)   Of the cases filed, the number of cases disposed of and the punishments awarded.

 

Suffice to say that no information was provided and the 2^nd appeal is pending with the Kerala State Information Commission (KSIC) since 26 Sep 2019.

 

Thanks to this fraud perpetrated in perpetuity, this issue of defacing public spaces continues unabated. When even in Motor Vehicle Act provision has been made for repetition of offences to be taken more seriously, is there any reason why such measures should not be introduced to make the dance of democracy more orderly for the society?

 

If defacing public spaces is explicitly banned it is presumed that private spaces will not be misused by candidates/political parties during elections. In the matter of private spaces, it is explicitly mandated that the permission of the owner must be taken. But in practice any property which appears not occupied is used with impunity.

 

Thus, it was that during the last General Election (in 2019) I found the walls of my adjacent plot plastered with the posters of a candidate. I immediately complained to all authorities from the CEC (complaints@eci.gov.in) down to the DEO(dcpkd@kerala.nic.in and contactus@ceo.kerala.gov.in, the State Chief Electoral Officer, in between).

 

The ECI merely acknowledged receipt of the complaint and informed that it had been forwarded to ‘concerned’ authorities. A query regarding the identity of this authority/authorities returned the same useless acknowledgement.

 

An application under the RTI Act, seeking copy of the file noting on action taken on the complaint by the DEO, did not elicit any response from the Public information Officer and the 1^st Appellate Authority. The 2^nd appeal is pending with the KSIC since 26 Sep 2019.

 

As per Sec 28A of the Representation of People Act 1951, those who are drafted for election work are deemed to be on deputation to the Election Commission of India, hence their control, discipline and superintendence will be vested with the Election Commission of India. This is quoted in all the proceedings of the District Election Officer and District Collector whenever the election machinery is set in motion.

 

But what happens if an Observer on election duty in one district of Kerala goes off to play golf in another district and he is recalled by the Election Commission of India? When information is sought on disciplinary action taken against the Observer, the Public Information Officer simply informs you that it is not available with the Commission. And the First Appellate Authority of the Commission, a Principal Secretary, has the cheeks to state that the information had itself been sought based on a newspaper report and recalling the Observer need not even be construed as a case of disciplinary or administrative action.

 

Readers may like to recollect or re-read the article ‘Survival by blackmail or art of governance’ at http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4595.

 

Former President of India, K R Narayanan writing in the Illustrated Weekly of India (‘Fragile Chimera’, 6-12 Sep 1987) had stated that few men are so disinterested as to prefer to live in discomfort under a government which they hold to be right rather than in comfort under one they hold to be wrong. In politics and administration, it is not enough to be right. It is imperative that the goods are delivered to the people, there is law and order and a general sense of comfort and above all a common sense of unity in the country and the society.

 

And Alvin Toffler, had observed in Future Shock that ‘psychologists studying the impact of change on various organisms have shown that adaptation can occur only when the level of stimulation- the amount of change and novelty in the environment- is neither too low nor too high’.

 

To conclude, it was Bernard Shaw who had said that ‘the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man’. 

 

I hope the message, or as it is often called, ‘the writing on the wall’, is clear.

 

24 Jul 2020.

 

TRUTH BE TOLD

 

TRUTH BE TOLD

P M Ravindran, raviforjustice@gmail.com

 

Shortly after independence a one-man commission had been constituted to report on the extent of corruption in government offices then. After submitting his report, when journalists sought his views on the subject, he summed it up in one sentence: I have started believing in God. He elaborated that there was so much corruption, but people still seemed so happy that there had to be somebody like God to make it happen.

 

Things haven’t changed much in the last 70 plus years, except perhaps that after Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, not any of his ministers seems to have got embroiled in any scams. And that is certainly a great thing to happen given the abysmal depths to which governance had been reduced to in the preceding years, since Independence.

 

Incidentally, one of the first ever scams reported in the country was the Jeep Scandal, in 1948. In the multiple deals involved, two facts stand out- one, there had been a scam in the purchase of those jeeps for the armed forces and, two, not only nobody involved had been punished for it, but V K Krishna Menon rose to be Nehru’s confidante and the nation’s Defense Minister.

 

The Rafael deal with France was sought to be raked up by those who had lost power due to the scams that they had tried to dismiss as a compulsion of coalition dharma. But thanks to their own failed effort to use the judiciary to taint the incumbents, it ended up as a whimper.

 

But defense preparedness had always been sacrificed at the altar of political expediency. It seems to have got some worthwhile attention only after the Chinese debacle of 1962 and till the Bangladesh victory of 1971; but continued to languish as usual, thereafter. It went from bad to worse after the Mother of all Scams, Bofors, hit the headlines in the 1980s. 

 

There is a truism that those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat its mistakes.

 

So, as in 1962, we were again caught with our pants down by the same Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army. But the damage control exercise has paid off for the time being; at least after 20 valiant soldiers paid for with their lives at Galwan.

 

The anti-China flavor of the season, due to Covid, working in India’s favor at the international level, also factored in.

 

A CAG Report had indicted the government on the lack of even snow goggles, snow boots and high-altitude ration for troops in Siachin.

 

Now, there is reportedly a rush to buy many essential items for the armed forces, starting with winter clothing and personal weapons.

 

The Prime Minister made an impromptu visit to the border areas to take personal stock of the ground realities. While he had done everything to pep up the morale of the troops, a third page, two-column centimeter media report also informed us that he had given a piece of his mind to the former Chief of Army Staff, who is currently the Chief of Defense Staff (CDS), for blinking.

 

At this point of time, at least as an aside, one is tempted to ask: when it is the Defense Secretary who is legally responsible for the defense of the country, what it the responsibility of the CDS in his role as the ‘one-point reference’ on military matters.

 

Also need to be asked are the following questions: what the expert opinion sought had been, when had it been sought, who had sought it and what was the opinion given, in the current imbroglio.  

 

This issue of the Defense Secretary being responsible for the defense of the nation has to do with the system followed by our colonial masters. Both in the UK and the US of A, the Secretaries of Defense are the equivalent of our Defense Minister and not mere bureaucrats. For the record, most of these office bearers are veteran soldiers themselves.

 

So, while we borrowed the term from their constitutional lexicon we merely superimposed an elected representative as a Minister, with clearly no responsibilities except to read out answers prepared by bureaucrats, on some questions related to defense raised in the Parliament.

 

This is also a sore point in Civil-Military relations in our country. When, in the aftermath of the 1962 debacle, the then Defense Minister had to resign, and many military heads rolled, nothing has been known on what happened to the then Defense Secretary.

 

Surely a case of ‘heads, I win, tails, you lose’ in favor of the bureaucrats.

 

Is this corruption? To my mind, it is. Anything done without rationale, logic or public (read national) interest in mind is corruption, if not treason itself.

 

From the Jeep scam of 1948 to the smuggling of gold in diplomatic bags is in keeping with the dictum that criminals are always a few steps ahead of those enforcing law.

 

But has anyone thought of the reasons why the operators had to resort to these extreme steps? Demonetization, rigorous actions as per Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act and Prevention of Money Laundering Act, cancellation of registration of dubious NGOs, confiscation of property of absconding criminals, push for digital transactions etc have indeed played their roles in driving these mafia groups to desperation.

 

Has the alleged involvement of the office of the Chief Minister of Kerala come as any surprise to anybody? I, for one, am convinced that Pinarayi Vijayan as the Chief Minister has done nothing correct or good and worse, done everything wrong or bad.

 

The only thing that serious citizens of God’s own Country must be remembering of Pinarayi Vijayan’s earlier avatar as the State’s Electricity Minister is the Lavlin Scam. The essence of the scam is that a contract for repairing some generators had been renegotiated by hiking the cost and about 50 percent of the hiked cost was to be spend by Lavlin, a Canadian firm, for constructing a cancer hospital in the State. Well, for an onlooker it constitutes a scam right away. But the worse thing was the investment in the hospital did not even take place. And the question raised is ‘where did that money go?’

 

In the current scam, Principal Private Secretary to the Chief Minister, Sivasankaran, is, reportedly, an accused. He is also the IT Secretary to the Government of Kerala. To douse the fire that was rapidly engulfing him, Sivasankaran has been sent on compulsory leave for one year.

Just recollect how Dr Jacob Thomas, IPS, the senior most member of the IPS had been suspended for over 18 months on flimsy grounds like writing a book without permission or commenting that the relief works that were carried out after a natural calamity was inadequate and flawed. (Please see ‘Kollunna Raajaavinu Thinnunna Manthri’ at http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=5396)

 

Vijayan is clinging to his office by declaring ignorance of whatever has reportedly happened. But thanks to technology, a video clip of Pinarayi Vijayan is viral on social media. It shows him criticizing the then CM, Ommen Chandy, and demanding his resignation when Solar scam had hit the headlines, less than 10 years back.

 

It is pertinent to recollect what a bench of S. B. Sinha and Markandeya Katju of the apex court had commented once:  The only solution for this menace (corruption) is to hang some people in the public so that it acts as a deterrent on others."

 

The gold smuggling case is not merely of corruption but has security ramifications also for the country. Reports suggest that the gold or its proceeds were intended for a terrorist organization operating from Hyderabad.

 

And my personal favorite quip: I have not killed anybody, but a smile had crossed my lips on seeing many obituaries.

 

16 Jul 2020