AAP helpline flooded with calls, ministers would now sit on street

Update: 2014-01-10 01:01 GMT
The anti-corruption helpline of Delhi government, launched on Thursday, was deluged with calls on Day 1. Around 4,000 calls were received within seven hours. After calling back 824 callers, officers identified 53 cases fit for sting operations and chose 38 corruption crusaders to conduct such operations. The chief minister Arvind Kejriwal  has now planned to sit on the road in front of the Delhi secretariat, with his entire cabinet to address public grievances.

Seeing the huge response, Kejriwal said staff strength would be doubled in the anti-corruption cell on Friday to take calls and guide callers on sting operation. ‘We have identified 38 anti-corruption crusaders who will act as ‘corruption inspectors’ to assist the officers to catch bribe seekers red handed. In some cases we have already sent teams to lay traps for bribe seekers,’ said Kejriwal. He added out of 53 callers, 15 refused to assist in the operation due to one reason or the other.

‘Some of the callers have provided very good quality audio recording of bribe seekers which will be used in the court as supporting evidence against bribe seekers,’ added Kejriwal.

The anti-corruption helpline was started at 8.30 am on Thursday with 10 channels and two operators for each channel. ‘Due to heavy traffic of phone calls we had to increase the number of channels from 10 to 15 within hours. On Friday, we will increase the number of channels to 30 and staff strength will also be increased accordingly for convenience of people,’ he added. The chief minister said to maintain secrecy the anti-corruption cell will be restricted for authorised officers only.


‘There are only a few bad fishes in the system and I want to tell them their days are over. They have to quit bad practices or people of Delhi will throw them out of office as the common man is now acting as corruption inspectors,’ added Kejriwal. He appealed to the Aam Aadmi to come forward to take up the role of corruption inspector by conducting sting operation with his mobile phone in order to weed out corruption from the society. He said a four-digit number to access the helpline would come into effect from Friday or Saturday.

The chief minister announced that every Saturday starting from 11 January the cabinet will sit on the road in front of the Delhi secretariat to address public grievances. ‘Nabbing corrupts is not the only solution to the issues people are facing. We need to provide them help and get their work done without having to pay bribe and in a time bound manner. But as a stop-gap arrangement, all ministers of the Delhi government, including the CM, will sit outside the Delhi Secretariat every Saturday to address the problems of the people,’ said Kejriwal.

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