The Himachal Pradesh High Court has directed the Chief Secretary to furnish a list of government functionaries involved in corruption and moral turpitude cases over the past 10 years.
A division bench of Chief Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice D.C. Chaudhary passed these orders while hearing a petition filed by drug controller Sher Singh Thakur, who was convicted last year for corruption, against the state to set aside the departmental proceedings against him.
During the hearing, the court observed that since November 2011, the court has been directing the principal secretary (home) to furnish information regarding officials involved in corruption cases.
But the principal secretary had informed the court through an affidavit May 9, 2012, that this would take a lot of time as the information is to be consolidated by the administrative secretaries concerned after receiving it from departments, boards and corporations under their control. The court observed that from November 2011 to May 2012 would have been sufficient enough time to call for the information and supply it to the court.
The next hearing of the case has been listed for Oct 31. Thakur was arrested by the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau in 2008 and was sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment by a Solan court in June 2011 under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
