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Vittal isn't cut up over enforcement director's hiring

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

Central Vigilance Commissioner N Vittal denied that he was upset with the Government of India for appointing S S Dawra as enforcement director without consulting him.

He declined comment on a report that he wrote a letter to the government criticising it for not providing him the correct facts about Dawra.

"There has been no violation of the directive of the Supreme Court of India. The government has followed the due procedure. I had presided over the meeting in which two other secretaries to the government also participated before the name of Dawra was cleared," he said.

Dawra was appointed ED on January 20.

Asked if he was still planning to list the names of certain industrial houses and industrialists on his Web site (http://www.cvc.nic.in), he said:

"No, the Confederation of Indian Industry has set up the Kamath Committee to go into the cases of non-performing industries. This committee in its report had said that Rs 510 billion get wasted because of non-performing industries. The report recommended that the government should take over some of the sick banks.

"The unions of these banks had said that they were not to be blamed. Some of the leading industrial houses have not returned the loans they had taken for their business. I feel the names of those industrial houses who have the money and still do not want to return the loans should be listed on the Net.

"I wrote a letter to the Reserve Bank of India. They told me that this was not possible as the laws of the Indian banking safeguarded the interests of the clients. I have written to the law ministry about it. If the name of a pickpocket can appear in the newspaper for a small criminal offence, then why not of the big offenders who are deliberately holding back the money of the banks?" he asked.

Would that not amount to defamation? "No. Because what we are doing is backed by documents. When I put up the names of the IAS and IPS officers on the Net, I received a lot of letters from officers of both the categories. Some of them threatened to file defamation suits.

"I consulted the law ministry and they told me that no defamation suit is made out against the CVC because we have taken action on the basis of the statistics and data provided to us by the departments concerned. If the officers concerned were not chargesheeted then it would have been the fault of the department.

"I am now going to chase these departments who have sent the files to me for advise and ask them what they have done about the individual cases," he promised.

Vittal said more than 2,300 cases are pending with the CVC. It is already looking into 1,100 cases. In all, over 8,000 cases have been referred to the commission, of which 1,200 cases relate to class one officers.

"I have asked all 489 chief vigilance officers to expedite the cases pending before them. We are going to update our list on a regular basis. Some more names would be there on the Net soon.

"Besides the IAS and IPS officers, the names of officers belonging to other government cadres like the banking sector, public sector, Indian Revenue Service would also be put up shortly. I see no reason why these names should not be put just because the previous 10 CVCs did not do so," he argued.

Vittal does not like being compared to former chief election commissioner T N Seshan. "Do you think you would have been able to walk into his room so easily and meet him the way you have been able to meet me?" he asked this correspondent.

He also took strong exception to some of the leading editors who dubbed him a publicity-seeker. "I am not doing all this to seek publicity. I am doing this because this is part of my job and it is my duty to expose those who are on our vigilance list because of their actions. But I am not saying that those who are on our list are corrupt. Their names are there because they face heavy penalties," he claimed.

He admitted that there had been a few errors in the list. " We had the name of an officer who died sometime ago. Then there was some problem about Mahesh Prasad's name appearing on the list. We have now clarified that the officer in question belongs to the 1973 batch and is not Mahesh Prasad Sr. I have already expressed my regret for the mistakes. Care is now being taken to ensure that there is no mess up now," he said.

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