Dilli Ka Babu: Clean-up time

The Modi sarkar’s crackdown on corruption is always ongoing. Recently, Parliament was informed that the government has dismissed two IAS officers and suspended nine IPS officers on charges of corruption in the past five years. This is apart from the sanction given by the Centre to prosecute 23 IAS officers and four IPS officers under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The campaign against corruption in the administration is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bid to reform the bureaucracy in the public interest. Earlier this year, the government had compulsorily retired 27 officers of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) on account of corruption and bribery. The move had sent shockwaves across the power corridors since no government had ever acted strongly against those babus who faced serious charges of corruption. Having started with the tax babus, it was only a matter of time that the government focused on the other services too.

Understandably, babus are jittery as they have not faced such intense scrutiny for a long time. The message has gone out that what many perceive as unprecedented acts of the Modi sarkar are founded on rules that were rarely applied earlier. These are the days of a Swacchh Sarkar!