Nitish Kumar’s apex corruption fighting unit hit by staff crunch

The unit, now headed by a full-fledged additional director general (ADG) rank officer Sunil Kumar, once had seven IG rank officers, most of them holding additional charge of the unit.

The Special Vigilance Unit (SVU) in Bihar’s vigilance department, an ambitious initiative by chief minister Nitish Kumar to nail senior corrupt government officials, has not lodged even a single case for the last two years while battling an acute shortage of manpower, Hindustan Times has learnt. Attempts are now being made to revive the virtually defunct department with appointments to vacant posts.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had started the vigilance unit with much fanfare in 2006. (HT photo)

Highly placed officials in the state home department said no vacancies have been advertised in Bihar since 2018. A senior home department officer said files were sent to the CM’s secretariat twice but nothing happened. “Now efforts are on to fill the vacant posts with the state police officers,” said the official.

Set up in 2006, the SVU used to be a crack team of former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials and was assigned a separate headquarters on the Serpentine Road in the state capital. However, till date, the SVU has filed only 22 cases and most have not reached any logical conclusion since charge-sheet could only be filed in 12 cases, said officials in the department, on condition of anonymity.

Almost 14 years since its formation, the SVU has become virtually defunct with only one out of the six posts of superintendents of police (SPs), meant for former CBI personnel, being occupied by a retired officer Arun Kumar Sharma, whose contract is likely to end in a couple of weeks. Only retired CBI officials are eligible for the posts of SPs in the SVU.

The unit, now headed by a full-fledged additional director general (ADG) rank officer Sunil Kumar, once had seven IG rank officers, most of them holding additional charge of the unit. The post of the deputy inspector general (DIG) in the unit is still lying vacant.

Former director general of police (DGP) Narayan Mishra was the first government official to come under the department’s scanner. Booked on February 6, 2007 in a disproportionate assets (DA) case, Mishra was charged for amassing wealth worth ₹1.35 crore, when posted as director general (DG), homeguards and fire services.

Then secretary of minor irrigation department, S S Verma, was the second bureaucrat to be booked in a DA case on July 3, 2007 for allegedly amassing property worth ₹1.43 crore beyond his known sources of income. The unit lodged the last DA case on January 14, 2019 against the then joint director of Industry department Sanjay Kumar Singh.

Development commissioner, Amir Subhani, who also holds the charge of vigilance commissioner remained unavailable for comment.