THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Though the jailbreak of Govindachamy has raised questions on the safety aspects of prisons, equally glaring is the lethargy of senior officers of the Prisons Department. Highly-placed sources said senior officials, starting from Prisons Department Director General Balram Kumar Upadhyay, have been turning a blind eye towards the daily monitoring of the functioning of the prisons.
As per the Kerala Prisons and Correctional Services (Management) Act, the Prisons DG should visit the central prisons and the high-security prison once every six months. This practice helps the DG personally take stock of the security situations inside the prisons and suggest measures to address them. However, the incumbent DG has been reluctant to visit prisons, sources said.
The central prisons, open prisons, women prisons and the high-security prison have jail advisory boards that meet every six months. The norm that was keenly followed earlier was that the DGs would go the prisons to take part in the advisory board meetings so that both purposes- attending the meeting and jail visit- were served. However, in the case of the incumbent DG, he prefers attending the meetings, which are held offline, online.
Sources told TNIE that during the last three years of his tenure as Prisons DG, Balram ideally should have visited Kannur and other central prisons at least six times, but he did not. “He was not interested in going there physically. Even when the advisory board meetings were taking place, he attended via online. Some of the sessions judges, who are members of the board, had reservations against the officer’s act of attending the meetings online. He has not visited Kannur central prison even once in a year,” said a source.
Officers like Rishi Raj Singh, however, had a different approach, the source said. “When the head of the department visits the prisons, it sends a message. The subordinates would be forced to remain proactive, while the DG can identify the issues that required swift redressal. By choosing to skip this, the DG has created missing links in the system,” it added. Even the DIGs stayed way from functions like the Prisons Meet conducted in jails. This, sources said, was done to cut down fuel expenses that could have incurred if a DIG visited a jail far away from his office.
Fingers pointed at DG
As per rule, the Prisons DG should visit the central prisons and the high-security prison once every six months which the incumbent DG has been avoiding
The DG has been attending the jail advisory boards, that must meet every 6 months, only online
