More than 4,300 employees of the Railways have come under the scanner of its own vigilance department for their alleged involvement in corrupt practices. Out of the total 4,310 employees who have come under the vigilance scanner, the Northern Railway has topped the chart with 849 staff, followed by Southern Railway (509), Central Railway (433), Western Railway (411) and 374 from East Central Railway, according to a Railway Ministry data.
Besides, 360 were from South Central Railway, 258 from North Frontier Railway, 177 from North Eastern Railway and 149 from North Central Railway, it said.
The department has carried out 16,658 preventive checks between January and August this year and found that 163 gazetted and 4,147 non-gazetted officers were allegedly involved in various corrupt practices, the data said.
The Vigilance Wing of the Railways had also made recovery of Rs 38 crore (Rs 380 million) from the preventive checks carried out in different railways zone.
"We carried out these checks to ensure that Railways employees do not indulge into corrupt practices. We have taken serious disciplinary action against such accused...We will intensify such checking in future," an official said, requesting anonymity.
The Railways, which has about 13 lakh employees, is divided into 16 zones for the purpose of operation and management.
It has earmarked 13 thrust areas for intensive vigilance scrutiny in order to prevent leakage of revenue, which includes commercial earning through tendering, traffic undercharges, misuse of various concessions including free passes, e-tickets (especially refunds after preparations of charts), checks in general coaches to detect fraud in tickets, quality of construction and disposal of scam.
