NEW DELHI: The scam-ridden Punjab National Bank (PNB) has been given the vigilance award by the Central Vigilance Commission for timely clearance of disciplinary proceedings and not for other categories, an official of the corruption watch dog said.
The official, requesting anonymity, said for the award in the category of 'Timely Completion of Disciplinary Proceedings', there were four eligible entries and of them, the chief vigilance officer (CVO) of PNB had the best disposal of 92 per cent of cases initiated during 2016.
Disciplinary proceedings were finalised in 187 cases out of a total of 203 cases within the prescribed time-lines of six months for major penalty and three months for minor penalty.
The next best performance was reported by the CVO of Indian Bank, with 58 cases finalised out of 103 cases initiated in 2016 ( 56 per cent).
"The award was given to these two CVOs for timely clearance of disciplinary proceedings and not for other categories," the official said.
The Vigilance Excellence Awards were instituted in 2017 and were awarded for performance of various organisations in 2016.
The awards were given in three categories -- for the CVOs/vigilance functionaries of Central Public Sector Enterprises(CPSEs), Public Sector Banks(PSBs) & Public Sector Insurance Companies(PSICs); Ministries, Departments, Others; and for Management.
CVOs of the first two categories were eligible to apply in four categories -- innovation, excellence in investigation, awareness initiative and timely completion of proceedings.
Managements of all the categories were eligible for the categories of best institutional practice to fight corruption, vigilance awareness and IT initiatives for transparency, the official said.
There are 499 part time CVOs and 193 full-time CVOs working in various organisations.
The CVOs are responsible for preventive vigilance, punitive vigilance and surveillance and detection.
Punitive vigilance relates to timely initiation and completion of disciplinary proceedings against officials of the organisations concerned.
Seventy-four nominations from 41 organisations were received, out of which 17 entries were selected for the awards.
Six entries were from Public Sector Banks and the others from CPSEs/Departments of the Central government.
PNB has been rocked by an over Rs 12,000 crore scam with the alleged involvement of bank employees and diamantaire Nirav Modi and his uncle and Gitanjali Gems promoter Mehul Choksi.