India Against Corruption

'Taint-free' Modi government to launch crackdown on corrupt officials from August 15
The vigilance department of each ministry has been asked to prepare a dossier of tainted and corrupt officials.
1. The Home Ministry is preparing the dossier based on service records of the officials.
2. The ministry has written letters to various departments and all the para military forces to finish the list by August 5, so that further action is initiated.
3. Dossier of corrupt officials and employees will be based on the complaint, enquiry report and conduct of the officials, moral turpitude, dereliction of duty in protecting the interest of the government. It will also examine whether major or minor penalty was imposed against the particular official or not
4. List/dossier of corrupt officials will be approved by the competent authority.
After the list/dossier is completed, the vigilance department will keep a watch on such corruption prone officials. PM Modi's crusade against corruption received a jolt, as the hard disk of CVC's portal crashed on November 28, 2016 and data against corrupt officials deleted. The problem has been compounded as the data was not backed up.
Finance Minister claimed that the generation of illegal cash has been made much more difficult by demonetization and the GST. “For 70 years Indian democracy has completely been funded by invisible money ,“ he said.“Elected representatives, governments, political parties, parliaments, and I must say even the Election Commission completely failed in checking it.“
Ringing words. But how many corrupt politicians have been prosecuted and how many corrupt officials jailed over the past 38 months? The day before FM spoke, a news report says that Chinese authorities had punished more than 210,000 corrupt officials in the first half of 2017.
The Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bill of 2013 has been going through several changes. It has been referred to a Standing Committee, the Law Commission, and then a Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha. The Modi government itself has proposed amendments in 2014 and 2015. Now, based on the Select Committee's August 2016 recommendations, the bill is finally on the calendar of parliament's monsoon session.
The Bill will add bribe-giving as a crime. The Bill says a public servant will not be deemed taking a bribe, or to have committed an offence if he “does not perform public function or activity dishonestly“. In addition, the amendment now says prior approval from an “appropriate authority“, which was needed so far by , say, the Central Bureau of Investigation to prosecute a corrupt official, will also now be required for an investigation. This is bound to tamp down the zeal of the CBI or special courts. The `authority' is the Lokpal at the centre, who does not exist so far, or the state-level Lokayuktas, most of whom do not exist either.
Importantly , the bill deletes Section 13(1)(d) (iii) of the original act which defines as an offence of criminal misconduct when an individual “while holding office as a public servant, obtains for any person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage without any public interest“.
(Source: India Today & Economic Times) more