TEAM HERALD
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
PANJIM: The controversy over the appointment of Goa Lokayukta refuses to die down with pressure mounting on Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar to get the ombudsman body functioning.
After facing flak and subsequently backtracking on government amendments and removing controversial clauses 16A and 19A in the act, which impose harsh penalties for false and frivolous complaints and which make a Lokayukta report deemed to be rejected if the competent authority does not act on it, Parrikar now faces a court case for delay in getting the Lokayukta functioning.
A Public Interest Litigation filed by Oncologist Dr Shekhar Salkar in the Bombay High Court at Goa seeks to take the government to task for not appointing the Lokayukta for nearly ten months after the law was enacted and notified. The case has been postponed for two weeks after the Advocate General asked for time to reply to the notice.
On Monday, the NCP charged that the entire process of appointing the Lokayukta was suspicious and that the government should come clean on it.
NCP Chief Spokesperson, Trajano D’Mello, told media that the government should table correspondence between the state and the judges who were short-listed for the post on the floor of the House.
“There were three judges who had sent in their applications for the post of Lokayukta. All these three names were ignored; instead the government appointed a search committee and came up with three more names, from which Mr Reddy was selected,” D’Mello said. “The government should come clean on the processes behind Reddy’s appointment,” D’Mello said.
“The search committee identified three names – V R Kingaokar of the Bombay High Court and P Ravindran and B Sudarshan Reddy. On what basis were these justices shortlisted? And how was the selection made? The entire process has been kept under wraps by Goa government,” D’Mello said, asking that the chief minister comes on record to make public all documents including letters that were exchanged between the six retired judges and the state government.
