Chor Babus, Shame! Shame!

Chor Babus, Shame! Shame!

Bangalore Mirror reporters and photographer tracked cars belonging to top IAS, IPS, Income Tax, NHAI officers and scientists of ISRO dropping their children at well-known schools. Have they even heard of a man called Lal Bahadur Shastri who refused to send his children in his official car to school?

M K Ashoka & Hemanth Kashyap
Posted On Thursday, December 18, 2008 at 01:17:57 AM
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Wednesday, 8 a.m. to 12 noon
We caught on camera bureaucrats shamelessly misusing government cars in a sting operation conducted at two of the city’s prestigious schools on Wednesday morning.

Our journey began at 8 am. The venue was Indiranagar where a large number of babus live. Most of them send their children to National Public School (NPS). This is what we observed :

The school watchman who wishes to be unnamed is witness to misuse of government cars for years. He was our first source. He says : Blatant misuse of government vehicles is going unchecked. Instead of being ashamed of their conduct, they demand special respect. Traffic cops give special treatment to them fearing backlash.

SPECIAL TREATMENT
“Government official’s vehicles are allowed to stop near the school for more than 30 minutes. Whereas we are asked to move on within 10 minutes”, says Manju, a driver who ferries the son of a businessman everyday from the school.

A vehicle from National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) stood opposite the Bishop Cottons Boy’s School on the busy Residency Road awaiting the arrival of the son of a Project Manager. Two persons waited for about almost an hour and ran inside as soon as the gate was opened at about 12.30 pm after the classes were over. They escorted the boy to the swanky car and went away.

A parent who came to take his kid home explained that everyday a vehicle from Raj Bhavan drops and picks up a kid. “What a way to bring up the children?”, he questioned.

These very same officials had drawn up a plan to decongest city roads by telling every parent to send their children to schools by a BMTC bus or by school van.

KITTY PARTIES
The practice of using official cars for personal purposes is not restricted to dropping children to schools\colleges and picking them back. Babus use spare cars to take the wives to jewellery shops, kitty parties, markets, clubs, malls and multiplexes. Senior IAS\IPS officers, Tahasildars and even Police Inspectors misuse the official machinery.

You may call this small, and yes, it is only a tip of the iceberg phenomena. But corruption starts here. The savings from these could easily swell and can become enough for good developmental works.

POOH POOHING
Our information is each IPS officer has three to four spare cars at their disposal. Police stations who actually fight criminals on the street do not have vehicles to move quickly to spots. During meetings on on city’s infrastructure, the babus come up with one catch line : car pooling is the answer. They don’t seem to practice the gyan they give.


WE SPIED ON THEM Time : 8 a.m. Location
IPS officers quarters near Shoolay Circle on Brigade Road. On a given day, five to six government cars leave the premises with children of IPS officers separately and head towards National Public School, Indiranagar. They travel separately wasting cars, fuel and manpower. No car pooling this!

MESSY USE
When C Dinakar was DGP (2000-01), he had strongly come against such misuse of official cars. During his tenure, he had cancelled spare cars which were at the disposal of IPS officers. But, the cars resurfaced after Dinakar’s retirement.

There are instances of some good officers who pay for using the government cars for personal reasons. They maintain a log book and enter the details of car usage and submit the book to the department once every month. If there is personal usage, charges will be collected per kilometre basis.

Currently, not a single IAS or IPS officer has done this, sources from Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR) under whom the cars come said.


We know the names of these officers, but we are not naming them as every other government officer is doing the same thing. If we name them, they will comment that we are prejudiced against them. But pictures speak a 1,000 words.

We caught government cars belonging to IAS, IPS, Income Tax, Raj Bhavan, National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), BBMP, KSRTC, Chief Engineers, Government of Karnataka, and the list is endless, on lens. These government vehicles were blatantly used to ferry the children of the top ranking officers.