After the exposure by Bureaucracy Today about the defence agency sponsorship racket being run by officials of the Directorate General Resettlement (DGR) favouring some and denying others in the game of allotting employment facilities to Servicemen post-retirement, the DGR and the Ministry of Defence went into a huddle. An RTI reply also reveals that the Department of Ex-servicemen Welfare of the Ministry of Defence ignoring a Central Information Commission (CIC) order wanted to close the case as per its noting of May 31, 2011. It was only after the report was published in Bureaucracy Today, that the Ministry of Defence was forced to issue a convening order on June 7, 2011. At the time when investigations were in progress by an inquiry committee in the DGR premises, Major General Pramod Behl, Director General Resettlement, issued directions on August 1, 2011 that with immediate effect no new security agency should be sponsored unless “it has a licence to carry on the business of private security under the Private Security Agencies (Regulation) Act, 2005”.
The DGR had a few agencies on its record having licences to carry on the business of private security, but some of its officials were not inclined to sponsor them for the reasons best known to them. Group Captain K P Sharma, Joint Director (Emp) at the DGR, in an allegedly clandestine manner issued a letter to this effect in August 2011 (backdated July 26, 2011), which was received by Mahanagar Door Sanchar Sadan, 9, CGO Complex, New Delhi, on August 3, 2011 through a representative of M/s Lali Security Services as revealed under the RTI appl icat ion.
The contents of the letter reveal that it was a policy matter having farreaching financial implications. A few retired officers reported the matter to the Director General Resettlement with copies to other officers about the “impropriety/ misconduct” by Group Capt Sharma. The complaint was examined and the allegations were found to be correct. The said policy letter has a financial implication of nearly Rs 6, 000 crores. After an inquiry on the complaint of coercion and misconduct reported to Air Chief Marshal NAK Browne, Group Capt Sharma was posted out. It is not understood why disciplinary action was not initiated by the MoD or the DGR or the Department of Ex-servicemen Welfare against Group Capt Sharma. Meanwhile, for the first time, the DGR has uploaded the Statewise list of officers running security agencies, giving IC/SS/SL/RC numbers of officers, their ranks, names, dates of birth, addresses, etc, on its website, dgrindia.com. A perusal of the list reveals that as on date only three to four security agencies are operational throughout the country. Many officers have logged on to the income tax website and have taken out Form No. 26AS. Many officers are running security agencies through the DGR. It is also revealed that many retired officers are employed in private firms at handsome salaries, in addition to receiving government pension, and have also taken security agencies.
