After Crime, Yogi Adityanath To Begin Large-Scale Crackdown On Corruption

On the sixteenth day of this month, two days after the Lok Sabha bypoll results had been announced, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath cancelled all his appointments. After a series of meetings with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) office bearers during the day, a high-level meeting was convened in the evening. Attended by senior cabinet ministers and bureaucrats, including the Cabinet Secretary and Director General of Police, a slew of decisions were made.

Thirty-seven Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, including District Magistrate of Gorakhpur, Rajeev Rautela, were transferred. Officers from mining, primary education, and Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission were summoned midway through the meeting and given a dressing down. It is learnt that Chief Minister Adityanath was particularly angry with bureaucrats from these departments for their corruption and lethargy. Adityanath has conveyed his displeasure over the working of certain ministers to the party’s central leadership also. A change in portfolios of some ministers is expected soon.

Deferring the political options for later, in the day-long meetings and deliberations, a major decision taken by the Chief Minister was to go all out after corruption. In a town hall programme organised by the Times of India in Lucknow, Adityanath declared his war on corruption. Renewing his earlier pledge, the Chief Minister said, “we will tackle corruption in the same way we have tackled crime.” He added that “corrupt government employees will be treated like criminals” and that “by now everybody would have understood, we mean business”.

He made his intentions clear in a tweet the next day and in an interview to Dainik Jagran two days later. In a public rally in Firozabad yesterday (21 March), the Chief Minister once again pledged to fight corruption in the state.

Responding to the feedback received from party workers, Adityanath has zeroed down on the specific areas of corruption which affect the common man. For long, villagers were being harassed by the police for selling mud. Armed with draconian mining regulations, anyone transporting sand, mud, or boulders came to be termed as khanan or mining mafia. The state cabinet has passed a resolution whereby policemen would have to inform a sub-divisional magistrate or circle officer to take action against violators. The royalty fee on mud mining has been withdrawn. Officials have been directed to see that these relaxations translate to a change on ground and the price of morang (sand used in construction) is brought down. A steep increase in the price of morang was touted as one of the reasons for the debacle in the bypolls.

Employing technology to fight corruption, the Uttar Pradesh government is mulling e-office for all its departments. Under the e-office provision, digitised files will be uploaded on departmental websites. The move will help pinpoint where and at which stage the files are pending. Efforts to digitise deeds in registrar offices have already commenced in September. On the lines of passport offices, in several districts, a facility to get time slots for registration at registrar offices have already been launched. On 21 March, the government has launched an anti-corruption portal where complaints can be lodged against corrupt officials.

Though Adityanath has made a strident pitch for an anti-corruption drive in the last few days, a sustained drive has been undertaken from the beginning of his tenure. According to BJP spokesperson Shalabhmani Tripathi, 192 corrupt officials have been dismissed in the last one year while 415 employees are facing enquiries. Some of these employees have already been booked under corruption charges and sent to jail. The Public Works Department (PWD) in particular has earned the wrath of the Chief Minister. According to a news report by Newstrack, 22 engineers from the department have thus far been dismissed while 273 employees are being given compulsory retirement. According to the report, which quoted Additional Chief Secretary Sadakant, departmental action has been initiated against 550 PWD employees. Likewise, eight officers of the Primary Education Department, five officers of the Joint Commissioner and Additional Commissioner ranks in the Commercial Tax Department, and three Circle Officers from Uttar Pradesh Police have also been given compulsory retirement for incompetence and corruption.

Even senior administrative officers haven't escaped the Chief Minister’s wrath. Additional Commissioner Meerut Randhir Singh Duhan and Additional District Magistrate of Gautam Buddha Nagar, Ghanshyam Singh, have been dismissed from service after they were found guilty of corruption. It is after a long time that officers in such high ranks have been dismissed for corruption.

Instructions have been given to investigate and decide on allegations of corruption charges swiftly. In Shahjahanpur, five police constables were dismissed from service within four days of a video surfacing that showed the policemen beat a shopkeeper for demanding money for cigarettes picked up by them from his shop. Not only did the police act promptly, the Director General of Police tweeted out his regret for the incident and warned policemen of strict action if found guilty.

Given Adityanath’s no-nonsense approach, one can expect in the coming days newspapers in Uttar Pradesh to carry more and more reports of a crackdown on corruption. In the last two days, the pages are splashed with arrests of six people, including two Assistant Regional Transport Offices in Etawah RTO office. The gang had been running a parallel RTO office issuing fake registration challans and permits. With an aggressive drive against corruption launched with renewed vigour, we can hope to see action involving many more departments.