The country’s top anti-corruption watchdog — the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) — has asked all government departments, public sector banks and insurance companies to ensure disciplinary cases are brought to a logical conclusion within the prescribed six months.

The CVC deals with corruption in government organisations and also supervises the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Highlighting that the department of personnel and training (DoPT) has issued guidelines from time to time on this, the commission has said the organisations concerned should adhere to complete disciplinary proceedings in a time-bound manner.

“However, it has been observed that on many occasions, there is inordinate delay in bringing the cases to logical conclusions, which is against the principles of natural justice and also defeats the very purpose of initiating disciplinary action,” the CVC has said in its order that has been issued to the secretaries of all central government departments and chief executives of public sector banks and insurance companies.

The DoPT reports to the Prime Minister’s Office.

The CVC said the existing instructions and guidelines, as issued by the commission and the DoPT, were “strictly adhered to” by the disciplinary authorities and other authorities concerned.

The chief vigilance officers (CVOs) of the respective organisations may bring these guidelines to the notice of the chief executive officer and all disciplinary authorities concerned, the order said.

“They may also follow up all pending cases to ensure that they are brought to logical conclusion within the prescribed timelines,” the commission said.

The CVC also said that in order to ensure a timely and smooth completion of disciplinary proceedings, training needs to be imparted to the prospective and current inquiry officers (IOs) and presenting officers (POs), which will help create a pool of trained IOs and POs in the respective organisations.

“For IOs/POs, who are serving public servants, timely completion of departmental proceedings by them needs to be given due weightage/cognisance by the reporting/reviewing officers in the annual performance appraisal reports (APARs) of such IOs/POs,” said the order.

The commission had earlier fixed a time limit of six months for the IOs to complete an inquiry of disciplinary proceedings and submit a report to the competent authority.

The commission said that in order to ensure timely completion of a departmental inquiry, the same IO should continue to conduct the probe even after his transfer or promotion till the report is submitted by him.

In case of the transfer of an IO to a new station, either his transfer orders may be given effect after the submission of the inquiry report or the digital mode or video-conferencing may be used for conducting or continuing with the department inquiry, the order said.