{"id":149,"date":"2019-09-08T20:01:03","date_gmt":"2019-09-08T14:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=149"},"modified":"2019-09-08T20:02:07","modified_gmt":"2019-09-08T14:32:07","slug":"what-is-the-motto-of-suresh-prabhu-behind-prosecution-of-two-sr-officers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"What is the Motto of Suresh Prabhu behind prosecution of two Sr.Officers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Officer, wrote to Cabinate Secretary that he stands ‘punished’ for no reason<\/strong><\/p>\n

Minister Suresh Prabhu okays prosecution of two officers despite CVC advice<\/strong><\/p>\n

MR misled about the so called ‘Rail Neer Scam’ via a letter written by CMD\/IRCTC<\/strong><\/p>\n

Minister and Rly. B’d did not feel the necessity to reply on this important subject<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"New Delhi :<\/strong>\u00a0Minister for Railways (MR) Suresh Prabhu<\/strong>\u00a0has given sanction to the CBI to prosecute two top Railway officers in the ‘Rail Neer Scam’, going against the advice of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and a report by the Railway’s vigilance department endorsed by the CVC. One of the officer – from the Indian Railway Traffic Service – has now written to Cabinet Secretary P. K. Sinha seeking his intervention.<\/p>\n

Sandeep Silas, a 1983-batch officer, wrote that he stands ‘punished’ for no reason, that he was suspended and jailed for some time and his residence was raided based on an accusation that was found to be baseless by two agencies.<\/p>\n

After detailed examination, the CVC had said the case was not fit for departmental action, let alone criminal prosecution, against the two officers. ‘The commission would advise against sanction for prosecution under Prevention of Corruption Act, in agreement with Railway Board’, it said. The Railway vigilance department and CVC had placed it on record that ‘no case is made out to sanction prosecution’.<\/p>\n

The sanction for prosecution, thus, came as a surprise to Railway bureaucracy, sources said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In anti-corruption matters concerning public servants, the CVC is the higher administrative body than the CBI even though its advice is recommendatory in nature. After the CVC gave Sandeep Silas and his colleague M. S. Chalia its clearance, Minister for Railways Suresh Prabhu, who is the disciplinary authority, sent the file back to CBI for its comments.<\/p>\n

After having sought sanction for prosecution once, all the CBI could do was reiterate its earlier stand. It was then that Suresh Prabhu gave the go-ahead last month.<\/p>\n

According to rules, for granting prosecution sanction, there has to be prima facie evidence of criminal activity whereas for departmental action, there has to be a ‘preponderance of probabilities’ – both of which were absent as per the examination by Vigilance and endorsed by CVC.<\/p>\n

\"\"The emailed queries to the Railway Ministry, which were placed before\u00a0Suresh Prabhu<\/strong>\u2019s office and the Railway Board authorities. It was communicated that the ministry would not like to comment on the matter. No reason given by both, Why?<\/p>\n

The so-called Rail Neer scam came<\/strong>\u00a0to light in October 2015 with a complaint from Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) to the CBI. The gist of the case was that bottles of packaged drinking water of brands other than Rail Neer (produced by IRCTC, a railway PSU), were being made available in Rajdhanies and Shatabdies even though only Rail Neer is to be supplied as per policy.<\/p>\n

Since other packaged drinking water bottles are cheaper than IRCTC ones, private caterers servicing those trains and stations stood to gain monetarily, causing a loss of Rs 19.5 crore to the Railways.<\/p>\n

As per rules, caterers get reimbursed Rs. 15 by Railways for every bottle of water they supply to passengers. The crux of the complaint was that caterers were deliberately supplying more of the other drinking water brands and causing loss to IRCTC.<\/p>\n

It was alleged that officials in Northern Railway were in collusion with private caterers to reduce Rail Neer intake in trains and artificially create the ‘space’ for other packaged water labels.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Sandeep Silas and M. S. Chalia<\/strong>\u00a0were Chief Commercial Manager\/Catering for Northern Railway at different times during the period under probe. Silas was in that position for 81 days (on leave vacancy), a fact he highlighted in his letter to the Cabinet Secretary.<\/p>\n

However, the current dispensation took the view that the sanction for prosecution would ultimately take the matter to trial at the special CBI court, which would decide who is guilty.<\/p>\n

In the case file, the fact-finding report of the vigilance department, later endorsed by the CVC, debunked all these allegations to say the sanction for prosecution should not be granted.<\/p>\n

Vigilance department and CVC added, ‘There were some irregularities in allowing supply of packaged drinking waters and passing of bills. Northern Railway Vigilance may be asked to investigate the case further – including roles and responsibilities of concerned functionaries.’<\/p>\n

Source :\u00a0Indian Express<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officer, wrote to Cabinate Secretary that he stands ‘punished’ for no reason Minister Suresh Prabhu…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koo_publish_custom_meta":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/railsamachar.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/suresh-prabhu-1.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}