CHAPTER II COMPLAINTS 1. Sources of Information 1.

1 Information about corruption, malpractices or misconduct on the part of public servants may come to light from any source, such as: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) Complaints received by an administrative authority; Complaints received in the Central Vigilance Commission; Complaints received or intelligence gathered by the Central Bureau of Investigation and by Police authorities; Departmental inspection reports and stock verification surveys; Scrutiny of annual property statements; Scrutiny of transactions reported under the Conduct Rules; Reports of any irregularities in accounts revealed in the routine audit of accounts e.g. tampering with records, over-payments, misappropriation of money or materials, etc.; Audit reports on Government accounts and on the accounts of public undertakings and other corporate bodies, etc.; Report of Parliamentary Committees like the Estimates Committee, Public Accounts Committee and the Committee on Public Undertakings; Proceedings of the two Houses of Parliament; Complaints and allegations appearing in the press, etc.

(h) (i)

(j) (k)

1.2 Information gathered from reports, returns, newspapers, etc. will be included under the term complaint and will be dealt with in the same way as letters of complaints. Information received verbally will be reduced to writing and dealt with similarly. B(51A) 1.3 Information about corruption and malpractices on the part of Public Servants may also be received from their subordinates or other Public Servants. While

17 Chap. II] COMPLAINTS __________________________________________________________________ normally a Public Servant is required to address communications through the proper official channel, there is no objection to entertaining direct complaints or communications giving information about corruption or other kinds of malpractice. While genuine complainants should be afforded protection against harassment or victimisation, serious notice should be taken if a complaint is, after verification, found to be false and malicious. There should be no hesitation in taking severe departmental action or launching criminal prosecution against such complainants. 1.4 Apart from information gathered from outside sources, the Chief Vigilance Officer should devise and adopt such other methods as he may consider appropriate and fruitful in the context of the nature of work handled in his organisation for collecting information about any possible malpractices and misconduct among the employees of his organisation. Information gathered in such a manner should also be reduced to writing and registered in the Vigilance Complaints Register (vide para 3.1.1.) at a suitable E(25) stage. 2. Complaints received by Ministries/Departments 2.1 Complaints received by or cases arising in Ministries/ Departments/Offices in respect of the employees under their administrative control may be dealt with by the administrative Ministry/ Department concerned. The Central Vigilance Commission is, however, responsible for advising the administrative authorities in respect of all matters relating to integrity in administration. The Commission has also the power to call for eports, returns and statements from all Ministries/Departments so as to enable it to exercise a general check and supervision over vigilance and anti-corruption work in Ministries/Departments. It may also take over under its direct control any complaint or case for investigation and further action. 2.2 The matters in which the Central Vigilance Commission should be consulted during the progress of inquiries and investigations and the reports and returns which should be submitted to Central Vigilance Commission to enable it to discharge its responsibilities have been indicated in the relevant paragraphs of the Manual. 3. Initiation Action on complaints received by Ministries/Departments 3.1 Registration of complaints in the Vigilance Complaints Register:

3.1.1 Every Vigilance Section or Vigilance Unit of a Ministry/Department/ Office will maintain a Vigilance Complaints Register in Form CVO-1. The Register will be maintained in two separate parts for category A and category B employees. Category A includes complaints involving employees against whom the Commissions advice is necessary, i.e. Gazetted Officer of the Central Government and Union Territories, Board

18 VIGILANCE MANUAL [Chap. II _________________________________________________________________ level appointees in the Public Undertakings; and Officers in Scale III and above in Nationalised Banks etc. (Also please see para 5.4, Chapter I). Category B includes complaints involving officers of the Central Government, Union Territories, Public Undertakings and Nationalised Banks etc., other than Category A i.e. officers in respect of whom the advice of the Commission is not necessary. 3.1.2 Every complaint, from whatever source received, will be entered in the Register of Complaints chronologically as it is received or taken notice of. A complaint containing allegations against several officers may be treated as one complaint for the purpose of statistical returns in Statement I-E(27). If the complaint involves both category A and category B officers, it should be shown against the highest of the officers involved and if he is category A in E(27). The date of receipt will be entered in the register across the page on the commencement of each day. 3.1.3 Entries should be made in the Register of only those complaints in which there is an allegation of corruption or improper motive or if the alleged facts prima facie indicate an element or potentiality of a vigilance angle. Complaints which relate to purely administrative matters or of technical lapses such as late attendance, disobedience, insubordination, negligence, lack of supervision or operational or technical irregularities and other lapses not having a vigilance angle will not be entered in the Register. 3.1.4 Information gathered from reports, returns newspapers, proceedings of the Parliament, etc., which has a vvigilanceangle will be included under the term complaint and will be dealt with and entered in the Register in the same way as letters of complaints. The source of information of each such case will be indicated in column 2 of the Register. 3.1.5 A complaint pertaining to an employee of an attached or subordinate office may be received in the administrative Ministry concerned direct and also from the Central Vigilance Commission. Such complain will normally be sent for inquiry to the office in which the Government servant concerned is employed and should be entered in the Vigilance Complaints Register of that office only. To avoid duplication of entries and inflation of statistics in returns such complaints should not be entered in the Vigilance Complaints Register of the administrative Ministry except in cases in which, for any special reasons, it is proposed to deal with the matter in the Ministry itself without consulting the employing office. 3.1.6 The Vigilance Complaints Register is designed to help the disciplinary authorities in keeping a watch on the progress of action taken on each complaint. An entry will be made in Column 6 thereof Action taken and column 7 Date of action

E(25)

E(25)

E(25) C(10)

19 Chap. II] COMPLAINTS __________________________________________________________________ respectively. Action taken will be of the following types (a) Filed without inquiry (b) filed after inquiry (c) passed on to CBI (d) passed on to other Sections as having no Vigilance angle (e) taken up for investigation by departmental Vigilance agency. If there were previous cases/complaints against the same officer the fact should be mentioned in the Remarks Column- Column 8. The entry in column 6 Action taken will mark the end of the complaint stage and, in cases in which it is decided to institute departmental proceedings or criminal prosecution-the beginning of a vigilance case-further progress will be watched through the other relevant registers. 3.2 Perusal and scrutiny of complaints 3.2.1 Immediately after registration in the Vigilance Complaints Register, each complaint will be put up to the Chief Vigilance Officer for perusal. 3.2.2 Each complaint will be examined by the Chief Vigilance Officer to see whether there is any substance in the allegations made in it to merit looking into. Where the allegations are vague and general and prima facie unverifiable, the Vigilance Officer may decide, with the approval of the head of his department, where considered necessary, that no action is necessary and the complaint should be dropped and filed. However, in respect of such complaints pertaining to the officers in whose case Commissions advice is necessary, i.e. gazetted officers in the Ministries/ Departments, Board-level appointees in Public Undertakings and officers in Scale III and above in C(81) Nationalised Banks etc., the papers, together with the views of the administrative authority, will be forwarded to the Central Vigilance Commission for advice whether the complaint may be filed. Any information passed on by the CBI to the Ministry/ Department regarding the conduct of any of its officers should also be treated in the same way. 3.2.3 Where the complaint seems to give information definite enough to require a further check, a preliminary inquiry or investigation will need to be made to verify the allegations to be able to decide whether or not the public servant concerned should be proceeded against departmentally or in a court of law. If considered necessary the Vigilance Officer may have a quick look personally into the relevant record and examine them to satisfy himself about the need for further inquiry into the allegations made in the complaint. Detailed guidance about the nature of investigation and the agency which should be entrusted with it, is given in Chapter III. 4. Complaints received by the Central Vigilance Commission

20 VIGILANCE MANUAL [Chap. II _________________________________________________________________ 4.1 Complaints received in the Central Vigilance Commission will be registered and initially examined in the Commission. The Commission may decide, according to the nature of each complaint, that: (a) (b) (c) (d) It does not merit any action and may be filed, or it should be sent for inquiry and disposal/report to the administrative Ministry/Department concerned, or it should be sent to the Central Bureau of Investigation for inquiry/ investigation, or the Commission should undertake the inquiry itself.

4.2 In respect of complaints forwarded for inquiry to the administrative Ministry/ C(36) Department, the Chief Vigilance Officer concerned will make an inquiry or have an inquiry made to verify the allegations and will submit his report together with the relevant records to the Central Vigilance Commission. The reports of investigation should normally be sent to the Commission within three months from the date of receipt of the reference from the Commission. If due to unavoidable reasons, it is not possible to complete the investigation within the specified period, the Chief Vigilance Officer of the Ministry/Department should personally look into the matter and send an interim report to the Commission giving the progress of the investigation, reasons for delay and the date by which the complete report could be expected. 4.3 In the case of complaints sent to the Central Bureau of Investigation for investigation, the Bureau will furnish its reports of investigation to the Central Vigilance Commission within six months, who will then advise the administrative Ministries/ Departments as to the course of further action to be taken on it. Attention in this regard is also invited to para 10, Chapter X. 4.4 In case in which the Central Bureau of Investigation is of the view that prosecution should be launched, further action will be taken in accordance with the procedure described in Chapter VII. 5. Anonymous and pseudonymous complaints 5.1 The Government of India have reason to believe that a good many anonymous B(45) complaints are false and malicious and that such complaints are not a reliable source of B(45-A) information. Inquiries into such complaints have an adverse effect on the morale of B(47-A) the services. The Government of India have accordingly decided that no action should C(90) be taken on anonymous complaints against Government servants.

21 Chap. II] COMPLAINTS __________________________________________________________________

5.2 The Government of India have also decided that pseudonymous complaints against Government servants should be treated similarly. When in doubt, the pseudonymous character of a complaint could be verified by enquiring from the signatory of the complaint whether it had actually been sent by him. If he cannot be contacted at the address given in the complaint or if no reply is received from him within a reasonable time it should be presumed that the complaint is pseudonymous and ignored. 5.3 The Central Vigilance Commission exercises great caution in scrutinising anonymous and pseudonymous complaints received by the Commission. Past experience shows that while usually such complaints are not found worth taking notice of, the Commission has not precluded itself from taking cognisance of any complaint on which action is warranted. 5.4 In the even of the Commission deciding to make an inquiry into any anonymous or pseudonymous complaint, the administrative Ministry/ Department which is requested to look into the complaint should make necessary investigation and report the result to the Commission for advice. Such complaint should be treated as a reference received from the Central Vigilance Commission and should be entered as such in the Vigilance Complaints Register and in the returns made to the Commission. 5.5 Where the Commission makes a request for an inquiry and report thinking that the complaint is not pseudonymous, i.e. that it is by an identifiable person but it turns out that the complaint is not of that character, the administrative authority may bring that fact to the notice of the Commission and ask whether the matter is to be pursued further. The Commission will consider and advise whether notwithstanding the complaint being a pseudonymous one, the matter merits being pursued. 5.6 The Ministries/Departments and Central Public Undertakings do not take any notice of anonymous and pseudonymous complaints. Sometimes a Ministry/Department or Public Undertakings may, however, conduct investigation into such a complaint under the belief that it is a genuine signed complaint. Even if any administrative authority investigates into such a complaint under the impression that it is a genuine signed complaint, or for any other reason, the Commission need not be consulted if it is found that the allegations are without any substance. But if the investigation indicates that prima facie there is some substance in the allegations, then the Commission should be consulted as to the further course of action to be taken. 6. Co-operation of voluntary public organisations press and responsible citizens in combating corruption 6.1 Co-operation of responsible voluntary public organisations in combating cor- B(42)

22 VIGILANCE MANUAL [Chap. II _________________________________________________________________ ruption should be welcomed. No distinction should, however, be made between one organisation and another. Nor shold any one organisation be given any priority or preference over others. Where a public organisation furnishes any information in confidence, the confidence should be respected. However, the identity and, if necessary, the antecedents of a person, who lodges complaints on behalf of a public organisation, may be verified before action is initiated. 6.2 Private voluntary organisations or individuals should not, however, be authorised to receive complaints on behalf of administrative authorities as such authorisation will amount to treating them to that extent, as functionaries of the administrative set-up. It would not be permissible or prudent to authorise any non-official person or organisation to undertake any of the responsibilities or duties of administrative authorities or of the Central Vigilance Commission. 6.3 The Committee on Prevention of Corruption recommended that editors and reporters should be encouraged under a pledge of secrecy to communicate to the Vigilance Officer or to the Central Vigilance Commission information about suspected corrupt practices. Responsible newspapers do not usually publish allegations against individuals and those who have allegations to make for public or private reasons may not go to editors or reporters of such papers. Some papers with national circulation, and many more with local circulation do, however, publish allegations against individuals more or less regularly and therefore, the reports about actual, suspected or sometimes even fabricated cases of corruption etc. tend to flow to them. Caution is, therefore, indicated in expecting the editors and reporters of the latter group of newspapers to communicate information under pledge of secrecy to enable Government to initiate action thereon. 6.4 The editors and reports of the more responsible newspapers may also receive information about corruption through their numerous contacts with people in different walks of life and should be able to help in the detection and prevention of corruption. How far a particular editor or reporter or a public spirited person is trustworthy is, however, a matter of judgement depending on a number of factors and about which it will be difficult to lay down a general rule. However, administrative authorities should welcome the help of editors and reporters of responsible newspapers and of other responsible citizens, in checking and detecting corruption, and should deal with any information given by them in an appropriate manner. Where information is furnished in confidence, the confidence should be respected.

B(39)