The main legal point established in the judgment is the need for invoking penal laws and discipline rules to ensure accountability in cases of corruption and the delay in taking civil and criminal actions against the accused government servants.

JUDGMENT :

1. This PIL is pending in this Court from 2012.

2. A very detailed order was passed in this PIL which really triggered the action. On 13-6-2013, this Court passed an Page 2 of 10 suresh 18-PILG-153.2012.doc order on the basis of the prayers in the petition and the allegations. The gravamen of the charge or the allegation was that there are schemes launched by the State Government as also the Central Government. The benefits of the same do not reach the real beneficiaries. The Budgetary allocations and financial provisions are made but when the amounts are actually released, they are siphoned off and misappropriated. The para 2 of this order in this PIL employs these two phrases, namely, “siphoned off” and “misappropriated”. It is not for nothing that this Court employs such phrases, expressions and words. The petitioners’ case was that budgetary provision of 9% has to be made in the yearly budget for tribal development and 24 project offices were established to implement the various schemes. Action has been taken pursuant to another PIL which related to non-implementation of such welfare schemes.

3. The corruption alleged in the scheme is then summarised in para 3 of this order.

4. After this detailed order, the State Government instituted an inquiry because of the directions of this Court by appointing a retired Judge of this Court. The report of the retired Judge of this Court has been received.

5. The complaint of the PIL petitioners is that ordinarily this inquiry report is enough for taking further action, civil as well as criminal. However, in its wisdom, the Government appoints a retired Indian Administrative Officer (“IAS”) to study the report of the retired Judge of this Court and to suggest remedial measures and actions. Mr. Raghuvanshi would submit that this is an extra-ordinary decision and was not at all supportable given the pendency of this PIL, the observations, findings and conclusions in the Justice (Retd.) Mr. M.G. Gaikwad Committee Report. That should have formed the basis for the criminal and civil action as also the recovery measures. However, delaying tactics were adopted to shield and protect the officers close to the political parties in power at the relevant time. Therefore, for studying and analysing the Justice Gaikwad Committee’s Report, the appointment of Mr. P.D. Karandikar, an IAS officer, was made. The motive was obvious.

6. Regardless of all that, even that report of the IAS officer does not absolve everybody but suggests that disciplinary action has to be taken.

7. Everything of what is alleged above, according to Mr. Raghuvanshi, is stated in the memo of Civil Application No.36 of 2018. Today, according to him, the criminal proceedings are not taken to their logical end inasmuch as in the cases of some of the accused persons, charge-sheets have also not been filed. Disciplinary proceedings may have been initiated but there is no end in sight even after more than seven years of the filing of the PIL and the report of the Justice Gaikwad Committee, which also came two-and-half years before today’s date.

8. Mr. Raghuvanshi would submit that by now some heads ought to have rolled but there is no certainty inasmuch as those officers, who are primarily guilty of the wrong doings, have been spared and as complained in some other litigation before this Court that petty officials have been made the scapegoats. The third objection is that there are no recovery measures initiated at all.

9. We can understand that recovery has to precede with proper adjudication or crystallisation of the liability. Possibly that can be done by rendering findings, supportable by cogent and satisfactory reasons, in the disciplinary or departmental inquiries.

10. However, we do not understand this enormous delay in ensuring that the officials against whom criminal investigation has commenced or prosecution is launched, have not even been named as accused. Nothing like filing a chargesheet or framing charges with due dili