BANGALORE: Central and state agencies fighting corruption in the country have lost focus of their primary responsibility and are out to outshine each other.
Unable to digest the popularity of Karnataka Lokayukta, the CBI, which normally deals with big corruption cases, has launched an SMS campaign similar to that of the state anti-corruption unit to increase public participation in curbing the menace.
A CBI official revealed its recent drive to seek information about the corrupt via SMS tip-offs from at least 20 lakh BSNL subscribers was actually aimed at countering the Lokayukta’s efforts to curb corruption.
Sources said the CBI felt it was losing ground to the Lokayukta in tackling small corruption cases and decided to take the state agency head on.
“For this, we needed public participation using the huge multimedia base the Centre has,” an agency official said, adding that the move was considered since the Lokayukta lacked teeth to bring the corrupt to book.
CBI SP (anti-corruption), Bangalore, Narashima Komar, said the agency was earlier not easily accessible to the general public. “Since our similar efforts at encouraging SMS tip-offs in Maharashtra had proved successful, we decided to repeat them in Karnataka using BSNL’s huge customer base,” he said.
Lokayukta spokesman Riaz Ahmed was, however, sceptical. “It would be a surprise if the CBI achieved even a fraction of the success we have since last October.”
Ahmed said it was collusive corruption that was most difficult to curb since it was done with the mutual consent of babus and citizens.
“I hope the CBI really does something about this. Our success is attributed to the common man whose initiative yielded results. Now, the CBI wants to explore the option.” The Lokayukta has since October 2007 registered 79 cases of corruption and confiscated Rs1.5 crore in cash. The seizure amount increases to Rs188 crore if immovable assets are counted.
The CBI is sending SMSes inviting complaints and information from people about corrupt babus. People can also send letters, e-mails, fax and make phone calls to the agency, besides posting information on its website.
“The response has been phenomenal. People have been calling us to give leads, incriminating information and even documents,” Komar said.
