| October 6, 1997 | ||
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PUNJAB
By Ramesh Vinayak "In a country where the majority of the people cannot get two square meals a day, a single officer cannot be permitted to have the luxury of three air-conditioned cars at his disposal. We are not 'Mughals' .We have to serve the society." -- Interim order passed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on September 17, directing the governments of the two states to enforce the 'one officer, one car' rule. It was an innocuous petition filed by two lowly employees. The petitioners, both placed under suspension, had alleged that their boss, the managing director of a state-owned bank -- who was not even a Punjab Civil Service officer -- was using an official air-conditioned Contessa car, a luxury that only state cabinet ministers were entitled to. What followed was evidence of the scandalous misuse of official machinery: in this case air-conditioned (AC) staff cars by the state's politicians, bureaucrats and police officers. Taking a suo moto cognisance, a division bench directed the Punjab Government to submit details of the AC cars with the various state departments, corporations and boards, and their funding. If the 46-page affidavit filed by Punjab Chief Secretary R.S. Mann last week is any indication, irregularities are the rule rather than the exception. With the court turning on the heat, an embarrassed Punjab Government is finding it hard to come up with credible explanations to justify the splurge at the expense of the tax payer -- expenses incurred on police vehicles alone are said to account for Rs 25 crore annually. What is more, the court has also sought an explanation from those who have or had access to more than one official car and asked them why the expenditure on petrol and maintenance of the extra cars should not be recovered from them personally. The state's bureaucrats, of course, have merely been following in the footsteps of the more influential politicians in the state. Some, like Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and former Indian Youth Congress president M.S. Bitta, figure prominently on terrorist hit lists and the security cover assigned to them is based on the assessment made by the Union Home Ministry. But for many others, the revived threat from terrorism has come as a perfect ruse to have a cavalcade of official cars. Arguably among the most protected chief ministers in the country, with his security rated Z plus, Badal faces grave threat of terrorist attacks. He thus has nine AC cars allotted to him, seven of which are bullet-proof while another is fitted with a frequency jammer that counters remote-controlled detonations. Similarly, Bitta, who is said to have survived at least half a dozen terrorist attacks, has four bullet-proof cars provided by the state Government for his and his family's use. And even after his retirement, former Punjab Police chief K.P.S. Gill has eight bullet-proof cars at his disposal. "The recent terrorist strikes have increased the threat perception," says Punjab Police chief P.C. Dogra. The frequent incidents of terrorist violence have seen many of the state's ministers scurrying for cover. Recently, Badal's son Sukhbir Singh, MP, had his security upgraded to the Z plus category, while his son-in-law Adesh Pratap Singh happens to be the only MLA provided with a bullet-proof car. Governor Lt-General B.K.N. Chibber has four cars, including a Mercedes, and the former chief minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal two. Some ministers and officers do not step out of their homes without a motorcade. By the Government's own admission, it has 435 official cars fitted with ACs and 271 are used by state government officers -- only 85 of whom are eligible for AC cars -- and departments. The rest are owned by the 45 state sector corporations and boards, more than two-thirds of which are in the red. As far back as 1979, the government had set up a Motor Vehicles Board with an eye to cutting down the misuse of official vehicles and expenses on petrol and maintenance. The board has been defunct for long. The dual violation of the official vehicle facility -- in terms of the additional car and the unpermitted AC -- began a decade ago when terrorism was at its peak and the state saw long spells of President's rule. "With no checks and balances then, the bureaucrats ensured that the breach expanded over the years and spread down the line," said one officer. Chief Secretary Mann concedes: "Even district-level officers are using AC cars." In fact, among bureaucrats and politicians, the status symbol often was not the make of the car you used but the number of official cars at your disposal. Politicians and bureaucrats were quick to devise ingenious -- often blatant -- ways to ensure that they stayed in the 'limelight'. There is the case of the financial commissioner (cooperation) who had an official car, yet managed to get one each from markfed and sugarfed, both state government cooperatives. As minister for panchayats and rural development, Nirmal Singh Kahlon is entitled to one car, but thanks to the corporations that fall under his ministry, he has three. Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, an Akali Dal leader, made up for his loss in the last assembly elections when he was rehabilitated as the chairman of the Punjab State Electricity Board. With the job came three AC cars. But what perhaps is even more galling is the way some have managed to acquire cars. The Government is likely to find itself in a spot explaining how Rs 17 lakh, meant for development schemes like the Jawahar Rozgar Yojna, were diverted by officials to either buy new cars or have ACs fitted in the existing ones. Records show that out of seven cars maintained by the Department of Rural Development and Panchayats, six were bought by diverting funds meant for welfare programmes. Officials of the Punjab Health Corporation helped themselves to Rs 20.35 lakh of World Bank funds to buy six cars, while the director of physical instruction (schools) dipped into the sports fund to buy himself an AC Ambassador. Others are known to have dipped into funds given by the Red Cross, while the Directorate of Small Industries diverted Rs 7.22 lakh from a undp-aided project to buy a couple of AC cars. Enough to prompt the chief secretary to comment; "There cannot be a bigger instance of lack of responsibility and insensitivity." The court perhaps summed it up better when it said: "Every man must govern himself before he can be considered fit to govern others." |
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The revived threat from terrorism has
come as a perfect ruse for the state's politicians and bureaucrats to corner the entire
fleet of government cars.
