The Lokpal Debate - Things to watch out for in the Coming Week

The Lokpal Bill is going to be tabled in Parliament tomorrow. What have been the pillars around which the entire debate has evolved? And what is the likely position in the Bill to be tabled tomorrow as per available media reports? Mainly these –

1.      How to ensure that the institution of Lokpal is both powerful and independent? To achieve that, the following is generally understood to be critical –

·        Administrative and financial independence of the institution

·        Broad based method of selection of members of the Lokpal

2.      Whether the PM and the judiciary should be covered under the scope of Lokpal?

3.      Whether or not Group B & C employees should be included under the scope of Lokpal?

4.      Whether or not grievance redressal should be within ambit of role of Lokpal?

5.      How to create similar institution (Lokayukta) at the state level?

6.      How to ensure speedy trial in corruption cases and strengthen the punishment mechanism for the offenders?

The way consensus around some of the above mentioned issues has evolved between both camps and as things stand today, some of these issues have ceased to be so.  These are –

·        The PM will come within the scope of Lokpal and the judiciary will be kept outside its purview.

·        Complaints of corruption against Group B & C employees will continue to be dealt by Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) with only a supervisory role envisaged for the Lokpal. Given the fact that the CVC itself is largely an advisory and supervisory body and the complaints at the ground level are dealt by internal Vigilance Divisions within each public organisation/ department, this in effect implies that for all practical purposes investigation of complaints of corruption against Group B & C employees will be outside the effective purview of Lokpal, in a way enabling the institution to remain focused on corruption in the higher echelons of the executive.

·        The task of creation of Lokayuktas in states will be left to the respective state legislatures since creation of the same by Union Parliament would amount to disturbing the federal character. This in effect means that the battle for setting up of Lokayuktas to probe corruption against state government officials has to be taken to the respective states.

Therefore, the main issues to watch out for when the bill is tabled tomorrow and thereafter when debate rages around it both inside Parliament and outside it are the remaining i.e. –

·        Administrative and financial independence of Lokpal – and that brings us to the main point of contention. Whether or not CBI should be under the administrative control of the Lokpal? The bill says no. And that is a critical let down. Let us clear the air on this first. What is required to be placed under the administrative control of Lokpal is the anti-corruption branch of CBI alone and not the organisation in its entirety. Administrative control would give Lokpal powers to select officers to be posted in CBI as also to transfer them or penalise the erring officers. It would also imply that the Lokpal can be independant and shielded from influence of the government of the day.  The government bill has merely inserted a provision saying that CBI shall not be answerable to the Ministry or the Lokpal during the course of any investigation on the merits of such investigation. (the intended purpose, if any, is likely to be lost to the ambiguous technicalities built into this provision) Otherwise it has only given supervisory functions to Lokpal over investigations done by CBI. The Lokpal can only enquire into a complaint and report the same to CBI for further investigations. This is indeed recipe for a toothless body that the government might be proposing tomorrow.

·        Manner of selection of Lokpal members – the panel for selection as proposed by the government appears to be heavily skewed in favour of the government of the day. The panel must be broad based in order to give a fair chance to building an independent institution manned by relatively non-partisan people at its very top.

·        As regards grievance redressal, the government has introduced a separate bill called Citizen’s Charter and Redressal of Grievances Bill. The good part is that this bill requires every public department to lay down timelines for rendering various services to citizens. Complaints against non-compliance with such timelines can be addressed to a designated Grievance Redressal Officer within the same department who has to attend to the complaint within 30 days. Next level of appeal lies with the head of that department and thereafter with new grievance redressal commissions being created at the state and national levels. Team Anna had instead proposed that action against complaints be taken by a judicial officer appointed at the local level who in turn would come under the administrative control of the Lokpal. The fate of this bill needs to be watched with interest along with Lokpal Bill simply because the concept of timelines for services to be rendered by public departments being introduced through this legislation has far reaching positive implications. Two specific items on the watch list could be – one, whether penalties proposed in this new law for non-compliance with time lines are strong enough to create deterrence and two, whether the system for grievance redressal proposed by the government is too centralised to be effective.

·        Last but not the least, the one issue which appears to have slipped into background but which is extremely critical is - what are the provisions in the Lokpal Bill for ensuring speedy trial in corruption cases and what is the punishment mechanism for offenders proposed and whether it is strong enough?

Meanwhile, we can all try and understand that Anna needs to do what he is doing because the interest in the issue has to kept alive lest we get cowed down by high sounding arguments about supremacy of Parliament or technical nitty grittys of law making and miss the point...once again.