CBI to propose anti-corruption support centre to government

New Delhi: The CBI is all set to forward a proposal to the government for establishing a National Anti-Corruption Citizen Support Centre which aims to provide single point-of-contact to people across India, CBI Director Anil Sinha said on Thursday.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chief said the centre will be a landmark initiative in empowering citizens to fight corruption.

"Our first working session is devoted to deliberations on establishing the support centre to provide 24x7 single point-of-contact for citizens. Hopefully, the discussions will be fruitful and we can go to the government very shortly with a concrete proposal for this centre," Sinha said at the inauguration of the 22nd annual conference of CBI, heads of state Anti-Corruption Bureaux and Economic Offences Wings.

He said the conference will also deliberate on legislative and regulatory gaps that have led to widespread growth of ponzi schemes across the country, in which crores of innocent citizens have been cheated. 

Sinha said the CBI had been actively engaged with the government in bringing a new legislation to ban these illegal deposit taking activities as "weaknesses in existing laws and regulations" have been identified.

"The discussions with all states would go a long way in giving strength to the new legislation which may be introduced in Parliament shortly," Sinha said. 

The CBI chief stressed the need for information sharing and coordination among law enforcement agencies at the Centre and states to fight corruption. 

"One session in the conference will study increase in cooperation among state and central agencies by building protocols that take note of concerns of each body... there are gains for all stakeholders in the exercise," he said.

Sinha announced that the central agency had completed the groundwork for setting up three world-class institutions -- International Centre for Excellence in Investigation, International Centre for Excellence in Forensic Science and a Centralised Technology Vertical -- to enhance CBI's investigative capacity in the field of human resource, forensics and technology.