VIJAY DEO JHA
Ranchi, Feb. 25: More than a fortnight after Jharkhand Governor Ramesh Bais sought a report from the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) about pending cases against government and police officials of the state, the ACB is still to comply with the order.
Sources aware of the development said that the ACB was still compiling reports since the report has been sought from 2001 onwards. “The ACB has six divisions covering 24 districts…old cases have to be seen hence it is taking time,” well-informed sources said.
But no timeline apparently has been communicated by the ACB to the Governor’s secretariat by which the report will be sent. Nevertheless, the Governor had directed that the report should be submitted within 15 days. A letter in this regard was sent to Jharkhand Chief Secretary Sukhdev Singh during the first week of this month. The Governor had also sought to know reasons if the investigation against any official was kept pending.
Notably, from 2001 till 2021, the ACB arrested 864 government employees in trap cases. The highest number of trap cases was reported in 2017 when 137 employees were arrested while accepting bribes.
But there is no history of ACB having arrested any IAS and IPS or trapped them accepting a bribe. In August 2015, the then Raghubar Das-led BJP-Ajsu Party government gave sweeping power to the ACB to arrest minister, MLA, senior bureaucrat and police officials without taking permission from the concerned authorities in case they are caught taking bribes.
In the last two decades, the ACB has hardly carried out any criminal proceedings against any IAS or IPS official except in a couple of cases. For instance, it had chargesheeted senior IAS officer S S Verma in the land scam. But investigations in the majority of cases are still pending. The ACB is always dubbed as an agency that is highly biased towards bureaucrats.
