Even while Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues trumpeting his ‘firm resolve’ of wiping out corruption in the country’s public administration, his BJP-led NDA-2 government is obviously reluctant to set up a statutory anti-corruption institution despite the Supreme Court making it clear that the existing Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act 2013 is workable on its own, without having to be amended as proposed by the government. The Court in April had ordered that the law, notified in 2014, was good enough for establishing the Lokpal, while rejecting government’s attempt to explain the delay on the ground that a parliamentary standing committee’s report on proposed amendments is still under consideration. The government was on weak legal footing when it claimed it was awaiting the passage of these amendments, mainly of one that related to the leader of the largest political party in Opposition in the Lok Sabha being considered as the Leader of the Opposition for the purpose of forming the selection committee to choose the Lokpal.
The selection panel consists of the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Leader of the Opposition, the Chief Justice of India or his nominee, and an eminent jurist chosen by them. The Apex Court has noted that the Act provides for the selection committee to make appointments even when it is truncated due to a vacancy. The court has made it clear that the fact that some amendments have been proposed and a parliamentary panel has submitted a report would not constitute a legal bar on enforcing the existing law.
It may be recalled that more than six years ago – in April 2011, Anna Hazare began a hunger strike to establish a strong Jan Lokpal Bill to fight all-pervasive corruption in the public administration. Thereafter for more than two years until 2013, the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement of Team Anna, riding the wave of popular discontent and anger against the governing class, brought the then Congress-led UPA-2 government to its knees and governance to a standstill.
Caving in to the enormous public pressure, Parliament passed the Lokpal and Lokayukta Act in 2013. More than four years down the line, perhaps the only one enacted post-Independence due to direct ‘people power’, stagnates in the statute books, ignored by the civil society that earlier vigorously rooted for its implementation. Unfortunately, the Act, even in its present moribund state, is being whittled down with amendments, such as the one in 2016 which eliminates the earlier statutory requirement for public servants to disclose assets of their spouses and dependent children, although it is well-known that illegally acquired assets are usually in the name of family members. Similarly, the government’s proposed amendment to the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) – which requires the Lokpal to seek government sanction not only for prosecuting public servants while in office, but even retired public officials – is clearly designed to weaken the functioning of Lokpal. The governing elites are understandably wary of an all-powerful ombudsman with no accountability to the executive.
How does one explain the extinguishing of public interest in the Lokpal? The singular factor is the Prime Minister who, post-demonetisation, has assumed the mantle of the nation’s anti-corruption messiah. Deified by a large section of his countrymen, he is perceived as the only hope in the Herculean fight against corruption. So powerful and clean is his public image that Anna Hazare’s repeated threat, in the last few months, to agitate against the government for not appointing the Lokpal has been contemptuously ignored, as also the SC’s reprimand over the delay in appointing the Lokpal. Obviously, no individual or institution today dares to confront the PM on corruption.
A question arises: Why is the PM, who claims to have taken on corruption head-on, averse to setting up the Lokpal to assist him in the fight against corruption? The ostensible reason the government has given is that there is no Leader of the Opposition for constituting the selection committee for appointing the Lokpal, although the same statutory limitation for the selection of the Chief Information Commissioner and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director has been overcome through an amendment in the law to treat the leader of the largest opposition political party as the Leader of the Opposition in the absence of anyone recognised as such.
A simple way of resolving the impasse was to recognise the Congress Party Leader in the Lok Sabha as the Leader of the Opposition. There is no law, except a direction from the chair when G.V. Mavalankar was Speaker, that says recognition is given only to a party that has won 10 per cent of the seats in the Lower House. A 1977 Act on the salary of the Opposition Leader defines the position as the leader of the largest party in the opposition and recognised as such by the Speaker. Curiously, an amendment to this effect is pending since 2014, even after it was endorsed by the Parliamentary Committee in its Dec 2015 report. The delay in passing this simple amendment is shamefully inordinate.
An inescapable inference is that the country does not have an anti-corruption ombudsman not due to any legal bar, but due to the absence of political will. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled that Lokpal could be appointed without a Leader of the Opposition. Consequently, detractors of Modi are of the view that the real reason for the government’s reluctance in appointing Lokpal is on account of its implications for the CBI.
The Lokpal Act has invested the inquiry and prosecution wings of the Lokpal with the powers presently exercised by the CBI, the last thing that the political executive would concede willingly. The CBI today is an outfit with an unmistakable aura of menace, for both politicians as well as bureaucrats. No government would want an investigating agency functioning under an unaccountable entity to monitor not only government servants but also MPs and the top political executives including the Prime Minister. It is now very clear, the governing elites are in no mood to see a functioning ombudsman that will curb the power of the political executive.
(The writer is a freelance journalist).
