Four days after the appointment of IAS officer VK Jeyakodi as the state vigilance commissioner, who will also be investigating the Gutka scam, DMK has filed a petition in the Madras High Court stating the appointment is illegal.
“The appointment of the 2nd Respondent as the State Vigilance Commissioner vide the impugned G.O. RT. NO. 2720 dated 2.8.2017 is unconstitutional, illegal, arbitrary and unreasonable and is tainted with colourable exercise of power,” said the petition.
DMK has submitted that the order be quashed.
DMK organising secretary RK Bharathi claimed in the petition that the State Vigilance Commission was set up as a specialised commission of the state government for advising the government on major administrative problem of prevention of corruption in public services in general and the manner in which individual cases of corruption are dealt with, reported The Times of India.
However, in this case, DMK said that the commissioner is a “puppet in the hands of the political bosses.”
“The person heading the Vigilance Commission the 2nd Respondent is serving at the pleasure of the Chief Minister and the Cabinet Ministers. He will always be a puppet in the hands of the political bosses. There cannot be any independent thinking or will he be allowed to function on his own,” said the petition.
Moreover, they claimed that the government has been nominating chief secretary or officers of the rank of additional chief secretary as the vigilance commissioner.
“If the investigation of corruption is to be monitored by the State Vigilance Commission and the head of the Vigilance Commission is to be an officer of the rank of Secretary to Government, it is unimaginable that such an officer would act impartially and the investigation will be fair and judicious, would even proceed against the Chief Minister of the State or against the Ministers of the State,” said the petition.
DMK also alleged that State Vigilance Commission and the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption have not taken any action against the ministers involved in the Gutka scam.
They want Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to be given statutory status.