Police,revenue depts top chai paani charts

Police,revenue depts top chai paani charts 

Bribe Amount Across All State Depts Up 37% In A Year: ACB

& S Ahmed Ali TNN 

Thane: When it comes to chai paani,Maharashtra police and the state revenue department lead the stakes,suggest the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB)s bribery charts of the past two years.More than 45% of the sarkari staff trapped in bribery cases belong to the two key state agencies.
The ACB statistics underscore a desperate need for transparency in the state administration across all departments as the total bribe amount trapped in 2012 increased 37% from 2011.
The bribe money involved in the previous year was Rs 52.6 lakh.This has jumped to Rs 72.8 lakh till November 2012.This is a reflection of the fact that the chai paani culture is gaining currency in state departments and a crisis is looming, an ACB official told TOI.
The police were ranked the most corrupt department in 2012,with 153 policemen caught redhanded by the ACB sleuths between January and November 2012 compared to 123 revenue officials.
Of the total 573 state staffers trapped by the ACB in 2012,26% belonged to the police and another 21% to the revenue department.These two departments dwarf all other state agencies in the corruption index,which is lamentable as they are the face of the government dealing with the common man on a daily basis, an ACB official told TOI.
The two departments fared more or less the same last year too;in 2011,the police and the revenue officials together also accounted for over 45% of the total 562 arrests made by the ACB.
The revenue staff were ranked number one then,the police second and staff of the 23 municipal corporations
and
221 municipal councils,third.
Top police officials,though,said it would be incorrect to conclude that the police and the revenue department were more corrupt than the other departments.
The average bribe involving policemen was Rs 11,000 and Rs 9,675 in 2012 and 2011,respectively.In case of the revenue department,it was Rs 6,000 this year and Rs 5,720 last year.Against this,one person from the charity commissioners office arrested in 2012 was caught taking Rs 2 lakh,and the average bribe accepted by town planning officials exceeded Rs 1 lakh.Though the number of police and revenue officials trapped is higher,the bribe amount is chiri-miri (small change) compared to the big bucks demanded by others.
The officer pointed out that bribe in return for favours is a norm in most departments,but is not reported as the person who pays gains too.
A cursory glance at the CAG report shows during 2010-11,the state lost more than Rs 60 crore tax revenue due to underassessment or incorrect grant of setoff to traders by sales tax officials.There is an obvious collusion between traders and ST officials,which has been proved in the CAG report.Here,the trader will never complain as he benefits from underassessment ofgoods while the officer concerned gets his bribe at the cost of loss to the exchequer.