New Delhi, Aug 30 (IANS): The CBI on Friday said it conducted "surprise checks" at 150 government departments at various places across the country, including Srinagar, in association with the vigilance officers of the departments concerned.

The CBI sleuths swung into action right from the morning and conducted the joint checks at departments including the Railways, BSNL, shipping, the Airport Authority of India, coal mines and coal fields, the Food Corporation of India, customs, power, municipal corporation, cantonment boards, transport, the Central Public Works Department, the directorate of states, fire, industries, GST, port trusts, the Directorate of Audio-Visual Publicity, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, the Archaeological Survey of India, public sector banks and others.

Besides Srinagar, the simultaneous checks were conducted at Delhi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Guwahati, Shillong, Chandigarh, Shimla, Chennai, Madurai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Gandhinagar, Goa, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Nagpur, Patna, Ranchi, Ghaziabad, Dehradun, Lucknow, Vadodara, Ahmedabad and Cochin.

"Today, a special drive of anti corruption work is being conducted by CBI. Over 150 joint surprise checks were conducted at suspected points and places of corruption where common citizens or small businessmen feel maximum pinch of corruption in government machinery," CBI Spokesperson Nitin Wakankar said.

The special drive have sensitized all stakeholders, possible avenues of corruption and the difficulties a common citizen faces while seeking services from such departments, he said.

"The joint surprise checks also strive to identify and highlight points and places which are vulnerable to corruption and would ensure that possibilities of corruption are minimized."

These checks, Wakankar said, will be followed in the next two weeks by an extensive campaign by CBI branches across the country to make the common citizen aware of how to reach out to government departments and seek to have their complaints redressed.