Dr.Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions administered the integrity pledge to the Officials of the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances today and addressed the officials. On this occasion, Dr.Jitendra Singh launched the DARPG’s “Ideas Box on Good Governance Practices in a Pandemic” and released Social Media tweets on the ‘Best Practices in e-governance”. The Ideas Box for crowd sourcing of ideas has been operationalized both on the DARPG as well as on the MyGov platform.

In his address, Dr.Jitendra Singh said that the celebration of the Vigilance Awareness Week is a reiteration of the Government’s resolve to continue the crusade against corruption. He said that in 2014, there was an atmosphere of despair and disillusionment and the common man felt that there is no redemption to the cycle of corruption. The Modi Government has successfully transformed the then pervading pessimism to optimism. In pursuance of the Prime Minister’s mantra of “Zero Tolerance to Corruption” number of decisive steps taken by Government to combat corruption. The Prevention of Corruption Act was amended after a gap of 30 years to make the processes more equitable and reduce opportunities for corruption. Government abolished interviews to Class “C” and “D” posts. The Lok Pal was made functional in 2018. Further the Central Information Commission and the DARPG have successfully scaled up disposal of cases. Further the National Recruitment Agency which will conduct the common eligibility test will provide a level playing field for employment opportunities to lower level jobs. Dr.Jitendra Singh said that Government has walked the talk in its Fight Against Corruption and the social esteem of being incorruptible has been seen in Indian society.

A round table discussion on the theme “Satark Bharat, Samriddh Bharat (Vigilant India, Prosperous India)” was also held by the Department keeping in line with the activities for the occasion. The round table was addressed by former Cabinet Secretaries Shri Prabhat Kumar and Shri Ajit Seth, former Secretary DOPT Dr.C.Chandramouli and Secretary DARPG Dr.K.Shivaji. The round table discussion focused on key issues of preventive vigilance in the pursuit of “Naitik Bharat” which included trainings in ethics of public service, social audit of ethical practices, development of measurable metrics for corruption and disproportionately high impact corruption has on governance. The lead discussants emphasized the need for ethics being the corner stone of public service, the importance of awareness generation in preventive vigilance, role of Chief Vigilance Officers, the adoption of integrity pacts and online portal probity and the amendments to the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Dr.Kshtrapati Shivaji, Secretary DARPG, Shri V.Srinivas Additional Secretary DARPG, Shri Sudhir Kumar, Additional Secretary, CVC, Shri Prabhat Kumar, Former Cabinet Secretary, Shri Ajit Seth, Former Cabinet Secretary, Dr.Chandramouli, Former Secretary, DoPT ,  Smt. Jaya Dubey Joint Secretary DARPG along with   officials of the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances took the pledge and were present for the observance of the Vigilance Day activities in DARPG.

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