The center point of all activities is customer of the organization. Therefore convenience of the customer needs to be given top priority. Corruption cannot be reduced without participation of the public. Involvement of the public is important in several aspects. Today I propose to unfold various steps taken by ACB; Maharashtra when I was heading it in 2013-2015 which enabled organization could occupy a position of glory in the entire country.
Immediately after taking over the ACB, I clarified to all officers that functioning of ACB is not restricted to office timings alone. It has to function round the clock. Action has to be taken against the corrupt persons, when she/he is going to accept the bribe. As a result there were several traps which ended in success, were done late in the evening or very early in the morning. The advertisement done by ACB stated we function 24*7 and it was followed in true spirit.
Nature of ACB is such that the office is not prominently located. The place provided by the district administration or available for hiring is usually in a distant corner or not accessible properly for the public. Moreover, if anyone tries to visit the ACB, he is usually kept under observation, followed or even prevented from coming in. In some instances, the agents used to confront them, and assure them to get their work done by contacting the concerned persons in which their work might be obstructed. To overcome these difficulties, it is necessary that ACB sleuths should not sit in their office and wait for complainants, as if they are sitting in a grocery shop. Moreover, couple of trusted persons from the office should be deputed to do patrolling outside to make sure 2 no complainant is prevented by anybody using different tricks. The suggested course of effective action is to list out the offices and persons who are gullible and usually are subjects of complaints. Vigilance officers should not sit in their offices but should be easily available near such offices. If a complainant telephones the office through helpline or otherwise, he should be encouraged to meet outside the office in an incognito manner, to prevent being noticed by anyone. Training needs to be given to vigilance staff to spot the persons who are harassed or noticed to be grumbling near the counters. In fact the vigilance staff should work as intelligence officers and interact with customers to find out whether they were subject to corruption or harassment by anyone in the office which is notorious for corruption. Preference should be given to identify complainants who are usually from poor background, senior citizens, women, youth, retired armed forces personnel, especially able persons (disabled). I used to pay maximum attention to scheduled caste and scheduled tribes’ persons as the complainants from this category are the most neglected ones. There are several NGOs which have specialized in the welfare of these groups. Immediately after taking over as ACB chief, I contacted federation of professional chambers of commerce and volunteered to address them and understand their grievances. In pursuit of the same, I addressed meetings of manufacturers, industrialists and businessmen at Mumbai, Pune, Nasik & Nagpur. It is advisable to interact with such groups from time to time and take their help in identifying the complainants. Moreover, it helps in removing from their mind and understand their concerns.
Getting complainant who is genuinely being harassed and encouraging him to complain is a skill of the vigilance officer. The psychology of the complainant is critical to understand. A complainant is usually not prepared to come forward for various reasons. He feels that the information he may give may be leaked to the concerned person and the vigilance staff and the concerned might be in league. The behavior of the vigilance staff therefore has to be so transparent, that there would be no iota of doubt to anybody. I remember many complainants used to virtually examine me about our process to understand, how we may proceed. Only after getting convinced, he disclosed details of corrupt practices indulged in by a RTO officer.
Complainants should be treated as most valuable persons as far the Vigilance department is concerned. Once the complainant is identified, all efforts be made to convert him into actual complainant who would lead to successful trap. Many a times, a person may complain, and then would not turn up at all. On number of occasions, he might have had a fight with the public servant or threatened him to take revenge for not doing some illegal work. On many occasions, complainants want to blackmail a public servant. Therefore, when the complainant approaches the vigilance officer, patient listening to his story and making out whether he is genuine and whether he has legal work for which he is being harassed is extremely important. The aim of the vigilance is to make trap against corrupt person, and ensure it ends in conviction of the accused. To achieve this task, How to do it?
Once the complainant is found to be genuine and determined to come forward, the identified vigilance officer should be associated with him immediately. In fact it should be the duty of the vigilance officer to make sure that the complainant does not get lost. If required the vigilance officer should remain constantly with the complainant and even keep him virtually confined and isolate him from any other outsider as the complainant is likely to change his mind for various reasons. Usually it is seen, that just before complaining, he suddenly has a feeling why to spoil the career of the public servant, this may damage his family and ruin his children. It is necessary to dispel all such feelings and convince him that his complaint can make justice not only to him but many others. Once convinced, he needs to be properly trained about how to behave when the demand is to be repeated. Many a times, the complainant becomes nervous and breaks out in front of the public servant or starts shivering.
In order to ensure that the complainant does not contradict himself in the court during trial, certain additional steps were taken by ACB, Maharashtra. These include following:
Ask the complainant to write the complaint in his own handwriting and not to type or write it by vigilance staff.
Ensure video recording of the complaint to capture all his expressions.
Use a bug with the complainant so that if the public servant does not allow a witness to accompany the complainant, still the conversation is recorded faithfully and the witness can overhear it in a secure atmosphere.
Immediately after the successful trap, we used to do video recording of the scene of offence recreating the scene without disturbing the situation as it prevailed during the trap.
All staff was trained in how to hash tag digital files so that they can depose in court effectively.
Simultaneously, all prosecutors and judicial officers were also trained repeatedly regarding use of these technological innovations. Interestingly, the judicial officers were also happy and appreciated the same.
It is necessary that the vigilance officer should continue to meet complainant at least once in three months and enquire about difficulties if any. The trap amount paid by the complainant should be returned immediately and he should not be harassed to obtain the same as the amount is usually sumptuous and the complainant might have borrowed it from someone else.
He also needs to be assured that the genuine work would not be hampered. In fact the work should be treated as if it is of vigilance officer and to complete the same, the vigilance officer should personally meet and a written communication should be sent to head of the department. In one case, one builder was being harassed by BMC engineers. After lot of persuasion, he came forward to ensure successful trap. He was apprehensive his other works might suffer. To reassure him, I wrote a letter to Commissioner BMC. As a result, all his building proposals which were pending since more than five to six years got cleared speedily. Same BMC officers who used to harass him like anything, started requesting him to come over, take sanctions and would also offer him a cup of tea thereafter.
Sometimes, the complainant also needs police protection as he fears for his life. In such instances, vigilance officer should seek police help by meeting police unit in charge. Application should also be moved to judicial magistrate to cancel the bail of the accused. It is necessary to write to head of the department to suspend the accused, obtain sanction as required from competent authority by making personal presentation to him. During trial, the complainant and the witnesses should be properly briefed so that they are not cowed down by the advocate of the accused. Once the trial is over and if the accused is convicted, it should be the duty of the vigilance officer to ensure the accused convict is terminated from the department.
If the vigilance officer maintains such rapport with the complainant, he himself becomes your strong supporter and persuades other complainants to come forward. In fact we used to regularly hold get together of the earlier complainants in every district. Felicitation of complainants publicly at the hands of prominent persons also boosts up his morale.
The vigilance staff needs to use all electronic, print and social media to the hilt to advocate the crusade against corruption and keep on appealing the public. I used to regularly give interviews on all radio channels, different TV channels and that used to evoke wide response. Using face book and twitter handle also pays rich dividends. The staff was encouraged to conduct skits in markets, weekly bazaars and publicize the ACB activities. All crime reporters were daily provided updates about the actions taken by ACB through e mail.
ACB had also launched free helpline 1064. Wide publicity of the same on trains, buses, bus depots schools colleges, farmers’ melas was attempted. That used to evoke wide response. We had also launched web based mobile app named www.acbmaharashtra.net . This provided the facility of reporting through uploading of video, audio and digital file. Regular follow up of the complaints boosted the morale of the complainants.
Active and easy to use website was launched and kept up to date for dissemination of all information including information provided to all applicants under Right to Information. All information provided under RTI was also put on the website for information of everyone. In fact so much information was kept in public domain, that the viewers were not only educated but also appreciated the concerns of the department and became advocates for their solutions.
All these measures went long way in improving trust of the common man in ACB functioning. In the entire country, when other states were hardly able to make maximum three to four hundred traps in a year, ACB Maharashtra consistently made twelve to thirteen hundred traps and most of these were quality traps. In addition, several persons who were on the verge of not speaking against corruption got courage and became ardent supporters in the fight against corruption. What we could do, can be replicated by any other unit provided these measures are implemented by officers from other units as well.
