CM’s Governance Associates given depts to curb corruption

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 6

The state government has assigned a department to each Good Governance Associate (GGA) of the CM to weed out corruption.

The Additional Principal Secretary to CM Rakesh Gupta said the departments had been given depending upon each GGA’s area of interest.

Gupta said the departments selected for monitoring included the police, regional transport authorities, SDM and tehsil offices, irrigation, public works, excise and taxation, power, birth and death registration and other departments, where corruption was rampant.

He said, “Since there is a great lot of public dealing involved in these departments, the GGAs will study their functioning, interact with the public and officials there and suggest ways to plug loopholes in the system to curb corruption.”

When the monitoring of the department assigned gets completed, the GGAs would prepare a specific module for corruption-free functioning which would be implemented in all 21 districts, said Gupta. The Chief Minister’s office has prepared a common module for all GGAs.

Refuting allegations by the Opposition parties, Gupta claimed the GGAs were not being paid by the government.

Instead, he said, Ashoka University, which was also the academic partner in the CMGGA project, paid them monthly salary of Rs 50,000 per month from its corporate social responsibility (CSR) fund.

Gupta said, “Government – academia collaboration is quite common in several western countries. It helps the government take advantage of the expertise and knowledge of the academia. Unfortunately, there was no such collaboration in India so far. Haryana is the first state to take the initiative.”