Shimla: The Himachal Pradesh High Court has directed the state’s chief secretary to furnish a list of government functionaries involved in corruption and moral turpitude cases over the past 10 years.
A division bench of Chief Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice D.C. Chaudhary passed these orders Thursday while hearing a petition filed by drug controller Sher Singh Thakur, who was convicted last year for corruption, against the state to set aside the departmental proceedings against him.
During the hearing, the court observed that since November 2011, the court has been directing the principal secretary (home) to furnish information regarding officials involved in corruption cases.
But the principal secretary had informed the court through an affidavit May 9, 2012, that this would take a lot of time as the information is to be consolidated by the administrative secretaries concerned after receiving it from departments, boards and corporations under their control.
The court observed “from November 2011 to May 2012 would have been sufficient enough time to call for the information and supply it to the court”.
“The court wonders what they have been doing for six months. Being a home secretary, a major part of the information could have been easily got available from police headquarters. There is no point in waiting for the report any further from the secretary (home). Therefore, the court directed the chief secretary to furnish the information within six weeks,” the judges observed.
The next hearing of the case has been listed for Oct 31.
Thakur was arrested by the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau in 2008 and was sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment by a Solan court in June 2011 under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
IANS
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