STATE TIMES NEWS
Jammu: The State Vigilance Commission (SVC) has disposed of 1742 complaints in 2015, including 44 from State Accountability Commission (SAC), and given a slew of direction on e-governance and monitoring of government schemes to ensure transparency.
The SVC in its 3rd annual report said 250 kanal of forest land was retrieved from encroachers following its actions.
The Commission also referred 61 cases to Vigilance Organisation for registration of FIRs and preliminary enquiries during this period, it said.
It has issued directions to several departments for making internal vigilance more effective and follow guidelines of e-tendering and e-procurement and ensure payments to parties and students scholarships are made through e-payment.
It has directed the social welfare department to fix criteria for establishing Anganwari Centres keeping in view the jurisdiction of villages and hamlets etc.
It directed the health department to check circulation of spurious medicines and asked it to prevent government doctors from doing private practices.
It has asked the Forest Department to minimise public interference in issuing NOCs to industrial units, removing encroachments and initiate legal proceedings against forest officials involved in or facilitating timber smuggling.
It has recommended the government to earmark one police station each at Jammu and Srinagar with the provincial territorial jurisdiction for dealing with offences under J&K Electricity Act, 2010 and issued directions to the power department to register FIRs against those resorting to electricity theft or illegal connections.
The Commission has issued directions to Rural Development Department for getting videography and photography done of all works being executed by it and upload them on its website.
The Commission has also directed the department to update the status of issuance of job cards on website.
The Education Department has been directed to monitor the mid day meal scheme on daily basis, preparation of records pertaining to school buildings which either have been left incomplete or payments have been made in full without completing construction works besides initiating action against delinquent officials and defaulting contractors.
It has also directed the department to impart training to the principals and headmasters functioning as drawing and disbursing officers (DDOs) on financial matters.
The department has also been directed to digitize data pertaining to date of births (DOBs) recorded in schools and store the same at zonal level and ensure its security.
All other departments, corporations offering public services, including the services coming within the purview of Public Service Guarantee Act, have been directed to set up a single window clearance system for issuance of necessary licenses, certificates, permissions and NOCs etc.
To address the problem in getting revenue documents, the Commission has issued instructions to the Revenue department for getting its records digitised.
The Commission has made certain other recommendations to the government for strengthening internal vigilance in the departments which includes installation of CCTVs at all offices having large public interface including the offices of Deputy Commissioners, police stations, traffic police check points, hospital ticket counters and preserve the CCTV recordings for at least six months.
The Commission has recommended the Finance Department that in order to bring transparency in e-procurement and e-tendering process bids not fulfilling all conditions of tender in letter and spirit be rejected through a system generated message and it shall not bind the intending department on any account.
A proper performa needs to be generated to enable bidder to fill it on line, it said.
It added the necessary clause in tender documents needs to be incorporated with respect to evaluation criterion to avoid evaluation on conjecture basis, thereby avoiding unnecessary litigations.
To have financial transactions system streamlined and ensure complete transparency in payments, the SVC has recommended the government to develop specified software whereby all financial transactions could be made online.
The recommendations will eliminate the role of treasury staff in making payments while the entire process will be on line, it said.
The services of the staff, presently working at various treasuries, sub treasuries across the state thus rendered surplus can be utilised in other departments which are without trained accounts staff.
Recommending carrying out of passport verifications in a a time-bound manner, the Commission directed Home Department it should be restricted to checking of records of the police station concerned, field reports already available with SP Special Branch, CID and the index section of CID headquarters. The Commission has also suggested visit by an individual police personnel to the house of applicants or calling him to police stations need to be stopped.
