Information about corruption, malpractices or misconduct on the part of public servants may come to light from any source, such as:

1. Complaints received by an administrative authority;

2. Complaints received in the Central Vigilance Commission;

3. Complaints received or intelligence gathered by the Central Bureau of Investigation and by Police authorities;

4. Departmental inspection reports and stock verification surveys;

5. Scrutiny of annual property statements;

6. Scrutiny of transactions reported under the Conduct Rules;

7. Reports of any irregularities in accounts revealed in the routine audit of accounts e.g. tampering with records, over-payments, misappropriation of money or materials, etc.;

8. Audit reports on Government accounts and on the accounts of public undertakings and other corporate bodies, etc.;

9. Report of Parliamentary Committees like the Estimates Committee, Public Accounts Committee and the Committee on Public Undertakings;

10. Proceedings of the two Houses of Parliament;

11. Complaints and allegations appearing in the press, etc.

Information gathered from reports, returns, newspapers, etc. will be included under the term 'complaint' and will be dealt with in the same way as letters of complaints. Information received verbally will be reduced to writing and dealt with similarly.

Information about corruption and malpractice on the part of Public Servants may also be received from their subordinates or other Public Servants. While normally a Public Servant is required to address communications through the proper official channel, there is no objection to entertaining direct complaints or communications giving information about corruption or other kinds of malpractice. While genuine complainants should be afforded protection against harassment or victimisation, serious notice should be taken if a complaint is, after verification, found to be false and malicious. There should be no hesitation in taking severe departmental action or launching criminal prosecution against such complainants.

Apart from information gathered from outside sources, the Chief Vigilance Officer should devise and adopt such other methods as he may consider appropriate and fruitful in the context of the nature of work handled in his organisation for collecting information about any possible malpractice and misconduct among the employees of his organisation. Information gathered in such a manner should also be reduced to writing and registered in the Vigilance Complaints Register at a suitable stage.

Complaints received by or cases arising in Ministries/ Departments/Offices in respect of the employees under their administrative control may be dealt with by the administrative Ministry/ Department concerned. The Central Vigilance Commission is, however, responsible for advising the administrative authorities in respect of all matters relating to integrity in administration. The Commission has also the power to call for reports, returns and statements from all Ministries/Departments so as to enable it to exercise a general check and supervision over vigilance and anti-corruption work in Ministries/ Departments. It may also take over under its direct control any complaint or case for investigation and further action.

The matters in which the Central Vigilance Commission should be consulted during the progress of inquiries and investigations and the reports and returns which should be submitted to Central Vigilance Commission to enable it to discharge its responsibilities have been indicated in the relevant paragraphs of the Manual.

Every Vigilance Section or Vigilance Unit of a Ministry/Department/ Office will maintain a Vigilance Complaints Register in Form CVO-1. The Register will be maintained in two separate parts for category 'A' and category 'B' employees. Category 'A' includes complaints involving employees against whom the Commission's advice is necessary, i.e. Gazetted Officer of the Central Government and Union Territories, Board level appointees in the Public Undertakings; and Officers in Scale III and above in Nationalised Banks etc. Category 'B' includes complaints involving officers of the Central Government, Union Territories, Public Undertakings and Nationalised Banks etc., other than Category 'A' i.e. officers in respect of whom the advice of the Commission is not necessary.

Every complaint, from whatever source received, will be entered in the Register of Complaints chronologically as it is received or taken notice of. A complaint containing allegations against several officers may be treated as one complaint for the purpose of statistical returns in Statement I-E(27). If the complaint involves both category 'A' and category 'B' officers, it should be shown against the highest of the officers involved and if he is category 'A' in E(27). The date of receipt will be entered in the register across the page on the commencement of each day.

Entries should be made in the Register of only those complaints in which there is an allegation of corruption or improper motive or if the alleged facts prima facie indicate an element or potentiality of a vigilance angle. Complaints which relate to purely administrative matters or of technical lapses such as late attendance, disobedience, insubordination, negligence, lack of supervision or operational or technical irregularities and other lapses not having a vigilance angle will not be entered in the Register.

Information gathered from reports, returns newspapers, proceedings of the Parliament, etc., which has a vigilance angle will be included under the term 'complaint' and will be dealt with and entered in the Register in the same way as letters of complaints. The source of information of each such case will be indicated in column 2 of the Register.

A complaint pertaining to an employee of an attached or subordinate office may be received in the administrative Ministry concerned direct and also from the Central Vigilance Commission. Such complain will normally be sent for inquiry to the office in which the Government servant concerned is employed and should be entered in the Vigilance Complaints Register of that office only. To avoid duplication of entries and inflation of statistics in returns such complaints should not be entered in the Vigilance Complaints Register of the administrative Ministry except in cases in which, for any special reasons, it is proposed to deal with the matter in the Ministry itself without consulting the employing office.

The Vigilance Complaints Register is designed to help the disciplinary authorities in keeping a watch on the progress of action taken on each complaint. An entry will be made in Column 6 thereof 'Action taken' and column 7 'Date of action' respectively. Action taken will be of the following types

1. Filed without inquiry

2. filed after inquiry

3. Passed on to CBI

4. passed on to other Sections as having no Vigilance angle taken up for investigation by departmental Vigilance agency.

If there were previous cases/complaints against the same officer the fact should be mentioned in the 'Remarks' Column - Column No.8.

The entry in column 6 'Action taken' will mark the end of the complaint stage and, in cases in which it is decided to institute departmental proceedings or criminal prosecution - the beginning of a vigilance case - further progress will be watched through the other relevant registers.