HARYANA TAKES STEPS TO CURB MALPRACTICES IN SDM OFFICES

CHANDIGARH: With a view to curb malpractices, the Haryana government will enforce uniform standard operating procedures (SOPs) in all offices of sub-divisional magistrates in the state.

A decision to this effect was taken by chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar in his three-hour meeting with his ‘good governance associates’ in New Delhi on Sunday. He also announced to open ‘CM Windows’ — a grievance redress and monitoring system to facilitate people to send complaints directly to the CM — at sub-divisional level as well. At present, it is functional at district headquarters and over two lakh complaints have been received. “Of these, 1.85 lakh have been redressed amicably,” according to an official spokesman.

During the meeting with good governance associates, the CM directed that all loopholes in the offline and online functioning of SDM offices be fixed to weed out corruption. On finding irregularities in making driving licences at SDM offices in Kaithal, Bhiwani and Dadri, it was decided to take strict action against the dealing clerks. The spokesman said that Rajender Kumar, clerk in SDM office, Kaithal, was found to be allegedly sending a large number of driving licences on same address through registered post.

Hem Singh, license clerk in SDM office, Bhiwani, was alleged to be illegally issuing 200 to 300 driving licences a day, and Shashikant, steno in SDM office, Dadri, was allegedly found to be working in nexus with agents. “Corruption in the form of nexus between agents and officials has been found in SDM offices, where agent codes are marked on files and bulk licences are made without taking tests,” he said.

After the SDM offices, the next target would be Regional Transport Offices (RTA) where procedures followed would be studied and efforts would be made to re-engineer the procedures to make them more citizen-friendly. HTC