VACB nullifies circularsissued by Jacob Thomas

The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) on Friday appeared to have erased the organisational legacy of its embattled former director Jacob Thomas.

An internal committee headed by veteran anti-corruption enforcers deleted at least 33 circulars issued by Mr. Thomas in 2016 as director. It found that they did not comply with the Vigilance Manual, the agency’s inviolable handbook.

The circulars which the agency has invalidated include Mr. Thomas’s attempt to give free rein to VACB unit heads to vet complaints, order preliminary inquiries, register cases, send reports to the government on their own and even file chargesheets without having to keep the directorate in the loop.

The agency also nullified his order that enforcers could treat audit reports as unimpeachable source information. Mr. Thomas had issued a barrage of circulars to change the agency from within during his short tenure.

Whistle-blowers found the orders encouraging. However, traditionalists in the agency, most of them career officers, who had put in a decade or more in the VACB, had felt Mr. Thomas sought to give too much authority to unit chiefs with too little oversight from the directorate. The High Court had also faulted Mr. Thomas for attempting to establish a “Vigilance Raj” in the State.