After a spate of cases in which Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) has caught IAS officers over graft charges, IAS officers of Haryana cadre are not happy with the functioning for ACB in Haryana.
They believe ACB works in a biased manner and only target IAS and Haryana Civil Services (HCS) officers. They show camaraderie with IPS and Haryana Police Services (HPS) officers.
The friction between the two lobby is not new. Around seven years ago, Haryana government started giving key appointments to IPS on posts generally held by IAS officers, who had protested against this practice. One such beneficiary that time was 1990 batch IPS Shatrujeet Kapoor, who was appointed as chairman of discoms, which was traditionally held by IAS officers.
Kapoor is now Haryana's Director General of Police and also holds the charge of ACB.
Apart from Kapoor, that time IPS Pankaj Nain was made director of sports department, IPS Navdeep Singh Virk was appointed as principal secretary of transport department and IPS Amitabh Dhillon was made Commissoner of transport department.
Even as their rivalry is not new, the immediate cause of dissent is back to back arrest of two IAS officers last week.
IAS registered their objection with CS and CM
The IAS and HCS officers have registered their objection with the chief secretary and have also said to have complained about it to the chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
However, Khattar said that the government is determined to observe zero tolerance towards corruption.
“No corrupt officer will be spared at whatever position he is,” Khattar said.
3 IAS 6 HCS officers arrested in two years
In last two years ACB has targeted around 12 IAS, 20 HCS officers and 3 IFS. Out of that, it has arrested 3 IAS – Dharmendra and two – Vijay Dahiya and Jaibir Arya – were arrested last week only in a span of one day. Apart from that six HCS officers have also been arrested.
The ACB is conducting enquiry of two IPS and four HPS officers also but no arrest has been made so far.
Also Read : IAS Vijay Dahiya caught in a bribery case, sent to judicial custody
IAS questions working of ACB
IAS officers question the arrest of the two IAS last week arguing that none of them wa a caught with money.
“The cops established links after arresting the middlemen. Links can't be established as one can't trust statement of middlemen,” they say.
IAS officers said that they don't have any problem if corrupt officers are caught or penalised.
“But it seems ACB is going beyond rules and regulations to target IAS and HCS. Are all IPS and other police officers honest and clean? Why ACB is not touching senior IPS officers? questioned IAS officers.
They argue ACB should not arrest any officer just on hearsay or plain complaint form anyone.
“Facts should be established and if proved culprit arrest should be made only after having the prosecution permission in place from state government,” they said.
Face off between IAS and IPS in Uttar Pradesh
Recently, Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Durga Shankar Mishra had rolled out a new guideline regarding review of development and law and order in Uttar Pradesh.
As per the guidelines, district magistrates (DMs) were to review the law and order in 68 of the total 75 districts with no active participation or value input from IPS officers controlling law and order in the district.
However, in the remaining seven districts of Agra, Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Noida, Prayagraj and Varanasi, police commissioners were to do the needful.
This order is said to have irked IPS officers, who approached chief minister and convinced him to revoke the order.
The order was repealed immediately and new order with revised conditions was issued. The new order states that DM would preside over the monthly law and order meetings and the SSP/SP, Additional DM, Additional SP, Deputy SP, senior prosecution officer, district government counsel and all station house officers (SHOs) would join those meetings.
UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath intervened the matter, which seems to have overtones of oneupmanship on part of IAS officers.
Also Read : One more IAS in ACB net in Haryana, MD Warehousing Jaibir Arya held in bribery case
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