CMP filed against top officials of Finance Depart for forgery and tampering of official records of “One Rank One Pension" File.

Please read our previous post: ‘Join the Legal Battle’

RIPF has filed a criminal case before the Hon’ble Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Thiruvananthapuram against former Finance Principal Secretary Jose Cyriac in the cadre of Addl. Chief Secretary now on central deputation and other top officials of Finance Department for forging and tampering of government records relating to the disposal file leading to 2006 Pension Revision ‘One Rank One Pension’ scheme. The other accused are Finance Pension Wing former Additional Secretary Ponnamma Mathew, Additional Secretary D. Solamon, Deputy Secretary A. R. Ajayakumar, Accounts Officer S.V Kala, and Section Officer V. Ajayakumar.

The Hon’ble Court has initiated enquiry proceedings of the alleged forgery, tampering causing disappearance of evidence,destruction of documents to prevent its production as evidence, and has summoned two IAS officials former Expenditure Secretary Ishitha Roy (now district collectorKannur) former Finance Secretar in charge Sri. Paul Antony (present SC/ST Secretary)who arw witness in the case and who had been in the process of the file leading to 'One Rank One Pension' scheme.

The complaint petition alleged that the accused had manipulated the file pertaining to 'one rank one pension'scheme by tampering with 116 pages of the file with the intention of denying the benefit of the one rank one pension scheme to a section of the pensioners retired in between 1-7-2004 and 31-3-2004.

The case is posted for hearing on the 26th of July 2008.

KERALA AMONG THE THREE HIGHLY CORRUPT STATES IN INDIA

A report brought out by Transparency International India (TI India) and the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) has revealed that Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are among the highly corrupt states, while only Andhra Pradesh features on the list of moderately corrupt states. The report has categorized various states into alarmingly corrupt, very highly corrupt, highly corrupt and moderately corrupt. Assam, Bihar, Goa, Jammu & Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh and Nagaland are in the category of alarmingly corrupt.

Sri. Hameed Ansari, Vice President, while releasing the report said that “corruption is pervasive and cancerous, eating at the very root of the social fabric of society.” Across the country, the total amount paid as bribes by rural BPL households in the last one year to avail the benefit of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been estimated at Rs.71.5 million. The study said that more than half the households paid bribes directly to the concerned government staff.

The police top the chart in terms of monetary contribution to corruption. The second highest among the surveyed services is land records and registration. The BPL households in India have paid a whopping Rs.9,000 million to avail the basic and need based public services. Five basic services – the public distribution system, hospital, school education electricity and water supply – and six need based services – NREGS, land records and registration, forest, housing, banking and police service – came under the purview of the study.

Chairman of the Centre for Media Studies N. Bhaskara Rao said that the RTI Act, social auditing and e-governance had helped significantly to bring down the level of corruption.

Please see our post ‘Success Story’

After having published the short-list of candidates to the post of assistants on 9 – 10 – 2007 in response to our RTI application dated 6 – 8 – 2007 and the RTI appeal dated 9 – 9 – 2007 the Kerala University (K U) has gone ahead with the interview of 2114 persons for selection for the 400 vacancies during November 15 to December 20. K U Vice-Chancellor informed the media on 26 – 10 – 2007 that the total marks for the test and interview will be on a 75:25 ratio (against the norms of 20 marks fixed by the PSC) after analyzing factors like academic performance and extra-curricular activities and hand-writing, and the members of the interview board were picked strictly in accordance with the rules. The interview board consists of Vice-Chancellor M.K Ramachandran Nair and syndicate members (all of the CPM fellow-travelers and office bearers) B.S Rajiv, A.A Rasheed, K.A Andrew and M.P Russel. The mark for the written test was 100, but the selection committee decided to revise it to 75. So marks scored by the candidates have been proportionately reduced. This would mean that the marks for the interview would come to around 33.33 percent of the marks for written test. Those who scored upto 64 marks out of 100 in the written test were called for interview. The highest mark scored was 91. 150 appointments will be made in the first phase. One of the allegations was that some applicants with high marks in the written test were eliminated in the interview process.
After the selection process were completed one-third of 200 candidates who were selected for appointments to the post of assistants are either close relatives or associates of CPM link party men - daughter-in-laws, daughters, brothers, two children of pro-CPM private teachers organization AKPCTA, son and daughter of CPM local committee Secretary. One of the notable inclusions in the list is the daughter of the present opposition leader’s special private secretary’s daughter. Of the first 160 rank-holders in the list, 110 are from Thiruvananthapuram 15 are from the native place of a syndicate member, two are the neighbors of the VC and one is the nephew of the Pro-VC.
Flouting all the norms, the KU syndicate had authorized the VC to do the tabulation work of the assistant test which was done in the personal computer of VC. According to sources, the tabulation of the marks was personally monitored by him. The usual practice was to tabulate the marks of such examinations in the confidential room of the Registrar under his supervision. Now the UPA Lokayukta came out heavily on the KU for failing to produce OMR answer sheets and other related documents of the selection process and also suo moto included Pro-VC as the third accused in the case before it filed by a senate member of KU. The VC and the Registrar are the first and the second accused.

Present stage of the case: It is lagging before the toothless Lok Ayukta for the last three months without any decision