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| 'Need to make Vigilance Commission working a 'mgmt function' for systemic change' | | Call for 'correct mix of preventive, punitive vigilance' in place | | Early Times Report
Jammu, May 22: At a time when the NC led coalition government is looking forward to public opinions which can be incorportaed in the amendment draft of state Vigilance Act, renowned legal luminaries and retired bureaucrats of J&K have come forth with some concrete suggestions , the focus being on making the working of proposed Vigilance Commission more of 'management function rather than a punitive function. They underlined the need for such a Commission which is mandated and empowered to serve not only to monitor the working of VO but mainly as instrument of systemic changes in the functioning of the government to make it corruption free.
In the panel discussion organised by J&K branch of Indian Institute of Public Administration on Saturday May 21, even as the speakers came out with some fresh suggestions, they fully endorsed the proposed amendments which were effected recently by the government in terms of making the appointments or suspension of the members by the state Governor instead of the cabinet as envisaged earlier and also expanding the scope of composition in terms of taking members from IPS cadre on board instead of from only civil services. While the members were appreciative of the fact that the Act is in place paving the way for creation of the State Vigilance Commission but were unequvivocal on the concerns over lack of full independence and autonomy to the iinstitution, missing basic rules and regulations nad use of superfluous language in the Act that has weakened its soul instead of strenghtening it further, no matter the provisions are more or less same as that of the Central Act. The speakers corroborated this in a detailed manner and called for comprehensive amendments to make it more relevant to what they termed as suitable to living needs of the society and present day system.
The underline comment supported unanimously was that there has to be a correct mix of preventive and punitive vigilance. The malaise needs to be targeted and not the individuals alone. It is the preventive vigilance through internal mechanisms, by leveraging technology in Government functioning and by making internal vigilance a management function that better and early results can be achieved. Accordingly, it will require an independent and autonomous Vigilance Commission on the lines of Election Commission or the Public Service commission. This coupled with implementation of RTI Act can make the system more transparent, accountable and people friendly, the speakers observed in theri comments. One more suggestion that emerged was that collegium, in order to ensure decision by majority count could be with three members instead of four or more.
There was a general consensus that the Commission should not be merely Civil Services Centric. However, this has been partly addressed in the proposed amendments and government needs to look into that when the Commission comes into existence. It was also felt that the Commission should not become a parking place for individuals with political connections. The selections could be made keeping in view guidelines set by the Supreme Court recently. The aim should be to maintain the "institutional integrity" and "institutional efficiency" .
Besides the panelists Dr Ashok Bhan, former Vigilance Commissioner, D.C.Raina, former Advocate General, B.L.Saraf, former District and Sessions Judge, Prof S.K.Sharma, former Head of the Law Department, University of Jammu a number of activists and citizens presented their views.The suggestions which emerged from the course of the discussions and interactions have been formulated by the state unit of IIPA to be forwarded to state government which has already put the proposed amendments in public domain for public comments. |
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