TEAM HERALD
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PANJIM: Civil society Thursday reacted to the amendments to the Goa Lokayukta Bill passed by the Goa Legislative Assembly calling it a mixed bag of relief and disappointments.
The groups ~ India Against Corruption and Goa People’s Front ~ in a joint press communiqué, asked why a piecemeal approach by taking up selective amendments was being resorted to when the government could have radically amended the Act by bringing in a comprehensive set of amendments on the lines of Uttarakhand Act, as promised earlier.
They expressed disappointment that the legislators had not fully appreciated the spirit behind the demands made by activists and said that they will still continue to pursue the following demands, that if the declaration of Lokayukta in respect of the chief minister or a minister, is accepted by the competent authority, the Act now provides that he “may resign” from his office; but this must be amended on the lines of the Karnataka Act to make it “shall resign”.
Secondly, Valmiki Naik and Satish Sonak stated that about the report of Lokayukta containing declaration in his report under clause(a) of Sub-Section(1) of Section 16 that he is satisfied that a complaint involving an allegation against a public functionary is substantiated and that the public functionary concerned should not continue to hold office held by him, under Section 16(A), it is provided that the Competent authority may either accept or reject such a declaration after giving an opportunity of being heard to the public functionary concerned. They feel that this is a self-defeating provision and as such it must be mandatory for the Competent Authority to accept the declaration and file an indictment right away.
IAC and GPF, therefore, have insisted that the appropriate provisions as per the Uttarakhanda Lokayukta Act be incorporated.
They also argued that the government must bring parity in the provision for payment of compensation and costs by complainant to public functionary and vice versa. “After Wednesday’s amendments, the public functionary is now eligible for Rs 10,000 to Rs 1 lakh as costs and compensation from complainant towards rejected complaint while for a complaint upheld by Lokayukta, the complainant is eligible for Rs 10,000 only in the principal Act. This anomaly needs to be amended for restoring parity,” says the communiqué.
