In Nitish’s footsteps
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s radical approach towards curbing corruption in government has evidently found many admirers. When Mr Kumar’s government passed a bill in 2009 which empowered it to confiscate personal properties of tainted bureaucrats, it was hailed as “clean” and “proactive”. Mr Kumar’s ensured that the law was implemented and that won him accolades and his re-election as chief minister.
Now the Madhya Pradesh government has passed a similar bill, which gives it absolute powers to appropriate properties of babus who aggregate wealth through corrupt means. The new Special Courts Bill 2011 will ensure expeditious disposition of corruption cases against government officers ranging from the village patwari to the chief secretary in specially accredited courts. The government’s concern over rising corruption in the state is obvious. In recent months several cases of large-scale bureaucratic corruption have come to light, not the least being the arrest early this year of senior Indian Administrative Service officer Arvind Joshi and his bureaucrat wife Tinu, who had allegedly amassed a staggering `350 crores. There are several other instances as well of other high profile babus caught with their hand in the till. We can only hope that chief minister Shivraj Chouhan’s initiative is as successful as that of his counterpart in Bihar.
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A ‘topless’ tale
Several weeks ago this column had pointed out the delay in filling the chairman and managing director’s (CMD) position at the Punjab and Sind Bank. Now, more than nine months since the post fell vacant, the Prime Minister’s Office and finance ministry continue to be at loggerheads, unable to decide whether to abide by or ignore the tradition of appointing a Sikh banker.
But this is not the only appointment, which is hanging fire. According to sources, there are a number of high-level banking vacancies that need to be filled, even as the files continue to shuttle from one ministry to the other. Sources point out that it took more than nine months before Sushil Mahnot was named the new CMD of Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi). The situation, we learn, is no different at Nabard, where despite conducting a stream of interviews with candidates since last year, the government has yet to make up its mind. Still, this fades in comparison to the case of the appointment of IDBI Bank’s Deputy MD, for which interviews were first held in November 2009. The only instance in which the government has shown a rare burst of urgency is in the appointment of Pratip Chaudhuri as chairman of State Bank of India, after O.P. Bhatt retired last week.
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