A Damocles sword looms large on the neck of the newly appointed Chief Secretary (CS) of the Punjab government V.K. Janjua against whom a corruption case was filed by the Punjab Vigilance Bureau which is pending in court.
Interestingly, while appointing Janjua as the Chief Secretary, he has also been given the additional charge of the Vigilance Department as Secretary which is prosecuting him. This appears to be a clear case of conflict of interest.
In an unprecedented decision, the Bhagwant Mann government appointed Janjua to the top post ignoring the seniority of many other IAS officers giving rise to heartburn in the bureaucracy.
Janjua was arrested by the Vigilance Bureau in 2009 when he had a stint in the industries department and remained in jail for around 2 months before being bailed out pending trial. A sum of Rs 2 lakh was recovered by the officials from his office drawer.
Janjua as per vigilance records had forced a Ludhiana-based industrialist Tulsi Ram Mishra to pay him a bribe of Rs 5 lakh, of which Rs 2 lakh was the first tranche, in order to get formers proposal for allotment of a piece of land adjoining his boiler factory, accepted.
After the vigilance bureau completed the investigations and presented the 'challan', the trial court sought prosecution sanction which is a prerequisite to be given by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) of the government of India since Janjua belongs to the all-India civil services.
However, the DoPT to date neither gave prosecution sanction nor refused it, leading to stalling of the trial. A senior bureaucrat explained that it implied the matter was still under consideration by the government of India.
Tulsi Ram Mishra has now moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court challenging the elevation of a "tainted" officer as the Chief Secretary and secretary in-charge of the Vigilance. The case is fixed for a hearing in August.
On the other hand, Janjua when contacted claimed that in 2015, the court of Additional Sessions Judge, Mohali, Ms. Jaswinder Shemar discharged him of all charges as the case against him was based on fabricated evidence. The money was planted in his drawer by Tulsi Ram Mishra who had entered his office in his absence.
Contesting Janjua's claim, Tulsi Ram Mishra's advocate Vaibhav Sehgal said, "Janjua is not speaking the truth as the Additional Sessions Judge, Mohali only stayed the proceedings against the accused since prosecution sanction from the GoI was yet to be received. He has not been discharged."
To a question, Janjua replied that the vigilance bureau had taken prosecution sanction from the Punjab government, which was not a competent authority, to put him to trial but the move failed. He also took up this matter with the GoI which sought an explanation from the vigilance bureau, but the bureau could not rebut his contentions. Following this prosecution sanction was not granted by the GoI.
Janjua said that he filed a criminal case against the complainant Tulsi Ram Mishra and the members of the raiding team of the vigilance bureau in the court of Judicial Magistrate First Class, Chandigarh, Mr. Inderjit Singh in 2012. After accepting his contentions on November 30, 2019, the magistrate held Mishra and vigilance bureau officers prima-facie guilty and ordered them to face trial on 15 counts. All of them are now on bail.
However, Mishra's counsel, Vaibhav Sehgal clarified that the order of the judicial magistrate, Chandigarh was stayed by the Punjab and Haryana High court in 2021 as it had many legal flaws.
However, the whisper in the corridors of power is that the Bhagwant Mann government's decision to appoint an officer embroiled in a corruption case as Chief Secretary does not quite jell with its proclaimed policy of zero tolerance toward corruption.
It is also surprising that the Bhagwant Mann government which won a landslide victory has witnessed the exit of three top newly appointed functionaries including Advocate General Anmol Rattan Singh Sidhu, Chief Secretary Anirudh Tiwari and DGP V. K. Bhawra within four months of its coming to power.
