JOIN US'PMO didn't back corruption cause'
Ramon Magsaysay Award winner and whistleblower bureaucrat Sanjiv Chaturvedi said on Wednesday that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) did not support him in his fight against corruption in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
The officer who has been out of work for over a year now said that he was able to “survive” only because of an “independent judiciary”.
He was shunted out as Chief Vigilance Officer of AIIMS after had unearthed several scams. Sanjay Chaturvedi said his pleas were ignored.
“My mistake was that while fighting graft, I took (Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s) ‘Na Khaunga Na Khane Dunga’ (neither will eat nor allow to eat) slogan at face value,” Chaturvedi, a Deputy Secretary, who is still assigned to AIIMS but without assignment, told NDTV.
Chaturvedi was brought to the Centre during UPA-2 after he was being “harassed” by Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government.
However, after he exposed corruption in AIIMS, he claimed Union Health Minister J P Nadda was targeting him.
“All kind of lies were spread against me when I was fighting corruption in AIIMS and Haryana,” he said.
The Centre has also not taken a decision on his application to be deputed to Delhi government as Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s OSD (officer on special duty).
Sanjay Chaturvedi’s fight against corruption in Haryana and later at AIIMS was mentioned in the citation of the prestigious award.
The citation said he “boldly” investigated and exposed cases of malfeasance “even when these involved powerful officials” in Haryana.
In his six years in Haryana, Sanjay Chaturvedi exposed illegal construction of a canal that threatened the critical Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary, the use of public funds to develop a herbal park on private land owned by a senior official, and rigging of government auctions.
“In a foreign-funded afforestation programme, Chaturvedi discovered that 90 per cent of the plantations existed only on paper, and that funds had been embezzled through the faked signatures of allegedly participating self-help groups and non-existent workers,” the citation said.
On his AIIMS activities, it said Sanjay Chaturvedi exposed cases involving irregularities in government procurement, contracts awarded to favoured service providers, kickbacks in building construction, a scam in which government employees collected the pensions of dead pensioners.
Chaturvedi also exposed the collusion between officers and suppliers of fake medicines.