Chandigarh: Ask anyone in any Haryana district, who in the local administration won’t lift a file without a bribe, and they will give you a name. So says the state’s vigilance bureau, which has done exactly that, and put the names on a list it hopes will help fight corruption.
The Haryana Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau’s ‘Don’t move without money’ list names 190 officials and employees so far. The bureau drew up the list in August. In the two months since, six of the people named have been arrested.
Speaking to ThePrint Thursday, Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau Director General (DG) Dr Arshinder Singh Chawla said the list was not built on proof. It was built on reputation.
“In every district, there are certain officials who have earned a reputation that they don’t move unless they are bribed. People who deal with them know these officials well. We told our officers to compile a list of such people based on what people think about them,” he added.
District officials, he said, were told to name only the 5 to 10 most notorious officials in their areas. Chawla said this was done so the bureau could meet its targets easily.
“We knew that if we identify 5 to 10 officials in 23 districts—and some bigger districts could have more than 10 as well—the figure will reach around 200. And if we are able to apprehend them red-handed, this will send across a very positive message and act as a warning for those indulging in corruption,” he said, adding a rider: these names may have made it to the list, but they are not the only corrupt officials in the state.
Why not arrest all 190?
If the bureau has such clear inputs about the people on the list, why can’t it simply arrest all of them? Chawla said the law does not work that way.
“In the court of law, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Unless we catch them red-handed while accepting a bribe, we can’t prove them guilty in court and get them punished,” he said.
Chawla spoke to ThePrint two days after he chaired the bureau’s third quarterly review meeting in Panchkula. At the meeting, he was informed that department officials conducted 64 raids in the third quarter (July-September), taking their total for 2026 to 155 raids.
From January to September, the bureau registered 90 inquiries and forwarded reports on 60 to the government. These included some cases pending from earlier periods, said Chawla.
The DG also asked officials to spread awareness about the ‘Satark Haryana’ mobile app, which was launched last month and allows citizens to file corruption-related complaints with the bureau. Every input received through the app must be verified, he said, even as he warned of action against people who deliberately submit false or misleading information.
Chawla has also announced a reward of up to Rs 1 lakh for a vigilance team that catches a Class-I officer taking a bribe. A person who gives credible information and helps in the arrest is entitled to get 30 per cent of the reward amount.
At the meeting, Chawla also directed officials to dispose of inquiries within a fixed time, and to monitor pending cases regularly. He asked them to examine every complaint seriously. He told officials to treat complainants with dignity and respect. Their cooperation, he said, often decides whether a trap operation succeeds.
Edited by Sunanda Ranjan