Chandigarh: The Haryana Government has put in place a dedicated financial mechanism to ensure that complainants who pay bribe money to facilitate vigilance traps are not left out of pocket during the course of corruption investigations.
Through a notification issued by Chief Secretary Anurag Rastogi, the government has constituted the Haryana Vigilance Bureau Revolving Funds, specifically to reimburse the bribe money provided by complainants for laying traps. The fund will be administered by the Director General, State Vigilance & Anti-Corruption Bureau, Haryana.
The move effectively creates a formal reimbursement channel for citizens whose money is used in sting operations against officials allegedly accepting bribes. Under the prescribed procedure, the investigating officer will forward the reimbursement proposal to the concerned Range In-charge—Inspector General, Deputy Inspector General or Superintendent of Police—for further processing.
A committee at Vigilance Headquarters will take the final decision on reimbursement on merit. It will comprise an Additional Director General of Police/Inspector General of the State Vigilance & Anti-Corruption Bureau as chairman, besides a Deputy Inspector General and a District Attorney/Deputy District Attorney as members.
Once the committee approves the proposal, the complainant will have to furnish an affidavit undertaking that the trap money released by the court after completion of criminal proceedings will subsequently be deposited into the revolving fund. After submission of the undertaking, the approved amount will be transferred to the complainant’s bank account.
The government has also built financial controls into the system. The revolving fund will be replenished once 70 per cent of its corpus has been utilised, while its audit will be carried out by the Principal Accountant General (Audit), Haryana.
