E-procurement reduces red tapism in tendering process

Bhubaneswar, Nov 7 : As many as 9,200 tenders amounting to Rs 21,800 crore have been finalised through e-procurement system introduced in Orissa since July, Director General of Vigilance Anup Kumar Pattnaik said.

Addressing the Vigilance awareness week, Mr Patnaik said the implementation of e-procurement in place of the traditional system had significantly reduced red tapism as well as human interference in the tendering process.

He said Orissa was one of the leading states in adopting e-governance tools to fight corruption, adding the State Government had already implemented initiatives like e-procurement, e-registration, e-municipality and secretariat work flow system to bring transparency and improve citizen-centric service delivery in the governance.

Highlighting the achievement of the Vigilance department, the DG Vigilance said so far 78 cases had been registered against 32 IAS officers and out of these cases, chargesheets had been filed in 23 cases against 11 IAS officers.

Similarly, 11 cases had been registered against seven IPS officers among which chargesheets had been submitted in ten cases involving six IPS officers.

Mr Pattnaik said as many as 28 cases were registered against 21 IFS officers of whom six had been chargesheeted in eight cases.

During the last five years, the Orissa Vigilance, had registered 1736 cases against 385 class I officers, 442 class II officers and 1476 class III employees Mr Pattnaik said.

The DG Vigilance said a record number of 320 cases were registered under the prevention of corruption act during last year by the Vigilance department.

Mr Pattnaik said the Vigilance department had so far registered 17 criminal cases against various mining authorities. Recently, it raided the premises of seven mine owners and unearthed illegal mining, violation of forest and environment act, Tax evasion, royalty evasion and illegal trading as well transportation. Apart from the registration of cases, the Vigilance had also introduced a system of conducting open inquiries against corrupt officers.

Last year 513 open inquiries were conducted against 76 class I and 87 class II officers, besides 234 class III employees, out of which 191 cases were registered and 161 enquiries refered to the department concerned for initiating regular departmental proceedings.

Mr Pattnaik claimed that during the last five years, as many as 209 cases ended in conviction in which eleven class I officers, 32 class II officers were convicted in the vigilance courts.

--UNI

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