THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Mr N. Shanker Reddy, DGP state Crime Records Bureau, has said that a petition filed at the Vigilance court alleging irregularity in his posting as Vigilance director was aimed at maligning him. In a letter sent to chief secretary S.M. Vijayanand last month, Mr. Reddy maintained that he was only given the additional charge of Vigilance director as the then Vigilance director Vinson M. Paul had retired from service. He was given full charge only after his promotion to the DGP rank.
There were several precedents of Vigilance ADGPs being given additional charge of Vigilance director, including that of Vinson Paul, Siby Mathews, R. Sreelekha, Mahesh Kumar Singla and P. Chandrasekharan, he said. The petition alleging irregularities in the posting of Mr. Reddy as Vigilance director by the previous UDF government is coming up before the Vigilance special court here on Friday.
Mr. Reddy said in the letter that the High Court had earlier disposed of a petition challenging his posting as Vigilance director. Administrative measures like promotions and posting were carried out by the government in exercise of the authority vested with it. It was mischievous to link such administrative actions with subsequent actions. The present government also posted the state police chief and the Vigilance director as per its prerogative, he said.
Preliminary verifications were being misused to make public servants a subject of public abuse through media and to file vindictive reports, he alleged. “This kind of abuse of Vigilance mechanism results in maligning of individual officers...If every administrative action of every public servant is permitted to be a matter of scrutiny through the anti-corruption mechanism, it would only encourage nexus between vested interests,” the letter said.
