VIJAYAWADA: The police personnel of the State, irrespective of their rank, it seems, are affected by a new craze - seeking a posting in the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB). “There is a huge craze among police officers to work with the ACB and officers are determined to excel when the opportunity knocks at their doors,” said a senior ACB official.
Ever since the State cabinet gave its nod to recruit personnel for the 350 new posts on March 5, 2018 to strengthen the department, ACB headquarters in Vijayawada received around 1000 applications from all the 13 districts, with the applicants expressing their willingness to work with the anti-graft agency.
From officers, who are in the rank of superintendent of police (SP), deputy superintendent of police (DSP), additional DSP, circle inspector (CI), sub-inspector (SI), to constables - police personnel in the State, are testing their luck to work in the independent investigation agency - ACB, a police source said.
After the ACB Director General (DG) RP Thakur sent a proposal to the State cabinet for sanction of 350 new posts for the department, which plays a pivotal role in curbing corruption in the State, the government released an order, sanctioning 300 ‘regular’ posts and another 50 ‘outsourced’ ones.
All the new ‘regular’ posts will be filled by personnel under deputation in a phased manner and the 50 ‘outsourced’ posts will be filled by persons on contract. “As per the GO, we got the provision to appoint one joint director, seven additional superintendents and nine deputy superintendents. With the new staff members, the Central Investigation Unit (CIU) will be getting more strength that can fasten the disposal of DA cases,” said RP Thakur.
However, there is a flip side to this craze coin. According to some in the know of things the reason behind this craze can be the idea that there is ‘huge scope’ to earn money. However, the ACB sources have rubbished the allegation. “All the applications will be verified. Candidates with a clean record will be directed to respective districts for verification. ACB has freedom, but not its officials. There may be ‘expectations’ that officials can ‘earn money’, but the recruitment process will be done in a transparent manner and integrity will be maintained,” Thakur said.
Sources said that the process of recruitment in ACB was not as simple as that in other recruitment. Recruiting a candidate in ACB involves various levels of verification and the candidate has to meet certain criteria prescribed, such as integrity, clean service record, the willingness of candidate and borrowing agency (in this case the ACB), conduct of the candidate and available vacancy in the district, a source said. Also, other factors like exceptional investigative skills, technical knowledge etc count in the process of recruitment, he said.