New Delhi, Sep 6 (Inditop.com) The government has sanctioned 71 new fast-track courts to speed up the war against corruption, according to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). These will come up in various states soon.
The government’s move follows an appeal made publicly to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by CBI director Ashwani Kumar here last month.
Kumar made the plea at a CBI gathering where he pointed out the “weak justice system” that was slowing down efforts to net the corrupt and bring them to justice.
“The CBI has always been active in its war against corruption. But the prime minister’s impassioned speech (at our meeting) has indeed encouraged us,” CBI spokesman Harsh Bahl told Inditop.
“We have resolved to complete all our investigations within one year and conclude the trial of corruption cases within two years.”
Bahl added that the government had sanctioned 71 fast-track courts to speed up the prosecution and bring the accused to justice quickly. “These will be established in various states.”
Bahl also said that the CBI was moving to fill up “some vacancies in the prosecution wing”.
Speaking at the CBI biennial conference, Manmohan Singh had warned that corruption was seriously hurting the mass of poor people in India.
“The poor are disproportionately hurt because of corruption,” he said. “We have some of the most ambitious and wide-ranging programmes in place to help the poor and the deprived sections of the society.”
Manmohan Singh called corruption a menace that “tarnishes our image” and “hurts our economic growth in a variety of ways”. He urged officers in the CBI not to let the “big fish” get away.
According to the Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International, India figures 85th among 180 countries in the corruption perception index.
A Transparency International survey backed by the Centre for Media Studies says that Indians cough out a whopping Rs.8,830 million ($176 million) in bribes in rural India alone to avail themselves of governmental services.
The Asian Development Bank says that corruption is the third largest “problematic factor” in India after poor infrastructure and inefficient bureaucracy.
Activists and officials admit that corruption has enveloped virtually every aspect of life and almost every sector in India. The worst sufferers of the sleaze are the mass of poor people, experts say.
“Corruption hurts poor people the most. This is the biggest challenge for the country,” said former CBI chief Vijay Shankar. “It’s due to corruption that the poor fail to benefit from development schemes.”
CBI officers have in the past pointed out that the agency needs more and more staff to step up its crusade against corruption.
The CBI has only 5,000 agents. It registered 752 cases against government officials in 2008. Over 9,000 trials are pending in courts. Till June this year the CBI had registered 565 cases against 823 government officers.
“It needs political will to fight corruption,” said Gandhian S.D. Sharma. “This is a war we have to win.”
