BENGALURU: Governor Vajubhai Vala on Monday said the state government is committed to fighting corruption and has given sanction to the Anti-Corruption Bureau to prosecute officials in 72 cases.
Addressing the joint session of the state legislature, Vala said, “My government continues to fight corruption. Since the Anti-Corruption Bureau was set up, 278 trap cases, 65 raid cases and 61 other cases have been registered.” He added, “Out of 106 cases received, prosecution sanction order has been given in 72 cases.”
Listing out the Siddaramaiah government’s achievements, Vala said the government has taken effective steps to maintain law and order and sporadic incidents of communal violence have been firmly dealt with.
On issues related to inter-state river water sharing, the government reiterated its commitment to ensuring justice to the state in availing of its needs for water in the Cauvery and Krishna basins.
The governor’s speech hinted at possible increase in fee paid for availing various citizen services. Referring to the implementation of GST, he said taxpayers have been facing various challenges in complying with the legal requirements envisaged under the GST on the IT platform and frequent changes were made in the initial months.
“Due to these reasons, collection in GST has been fluctuating as of now, but the shortfall is expected to be made good by the compensation due from the Central government as per the Act. The state is also making efforts to increase the non-tax collections with departments undertaking an exercise to revise rates of many items which had been due for quite some years. Such steps are expected to benefit the state fiscally.”
Sources said the governor was referring to fees collected by various departments such as Forest and Revenue for citizen services such as issuing land record documents. “Individually, they are small amounts, but they can add up to a considerable sum. A committee, headed by Additional Chief Secretary Vijaybhaskar, is looking into it,” a source added.