For a people's charter - Lokayukta can plug loopholes in graft probes

By Jayaram Venkatesan

A year ago there were several protests by civil society and political parties demanding the transfer of the suicide case of agricultural engineer Muthukumaraswamy to the CBI. However, the case was handed to CB-CID. On Tuesday , the former agriculture minister S S Krishnamoorthy , who was arrested on charges of abetment of the suicide and on charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act, was given a clean chit. The high court quashed the case against the minister as there was no material evidence against him. While we must respect the court order, we should realise the problem with many of these corruption cases is that they suffer from a lack of independent investigation. An institution like Lokayukta, as previously debated in this column of TOI, will help in ensuring fairness in governance.

In this particular case, the CB-CID seems to have operated with heavy bias even though they said that they had prima facie evidence while arresting the former minister. Firstly , the CB-CID kept silent for almost a month. After mounting public pressure, they arrested the former minister saying that there was prima facie evidence.Secondly , one of the key demands by civil society and media at the time of his arrest was that the corruption charges must be looked into. This pertained to the process of recruitment of drivers in other districts where money transactions occurred and whether the increase in the assets of the minister and his aides was proportionate to their income. But these aspects were left out of the purview of the probe.

Thirdly , any case under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, can only be tried before a special judge of the level of a ses sions court judge. However, the CB-CID filed the chargesheet before a magistrate.Was the CB-CID ignorant or did they deliberately file the chargesheet before a magisterial court? Shouldn't this gross “error“ be investigated? This seems to be a delaying tactic as the case is now caught in complications of transfer between the magisterial and the special court. It remains to be seen if the CB-CID will be able to produce any evidence of corruption in the case against the chief engineer and others.

This is not the first time that proper procedure of investigations has been violated. In the case of the Aavin scam, the CB-CID completed the probe without investigating the conspiracy of the officials of Aavin prompting the high court to warn the agency and threaten to transfer the case to the CBI. There has been little headway in the case thereafter. The recent order of the chief secretary that investigation of corruption cases involving government officials re quires sanc tion of the vigilance com missioner, is a conflict of interest as the chief secre tary representing the government also holds the position of the vigi lance commissioner.

In all this, it's the citizen who loses out on a free and fair system.

How is an investigative agency expected to work independently under the same political and execu tive bosses? The cases mentioned above only reinforce the contin ued demand for Lok ayukta in Tamil Nadu which needs to be set up as an independent inves tigative authority for graft cases.To fight corruption, we need several reforms in the electoral and judicial sphere as well as in the police department.

But what we need most is an independent institution like the Lokayukta that can investigate and try corruption cases. We also need independent institutions and acts on Lokayukta, right to services and whistleblowers protection to bring down corruption levels significantly .

Only pressure from the people will help in putting an efficient system in place.Arappor Iyakkam with the help of experts such as Santosh Hegde, former Lokayukta of Karnataka, and feedback from common people has put together a citizens model for the Lokayukta that will be released on March 12 at 11am at Adyar Rajaratinam Arangam as part of a larger anti-corruption public event. Since politicians listen to the citizens mostly during elections let us pressure the political class to promise and implement an independent Lokayukta for the state.

(The author is a convener of Arappor Iyakkam, an anti corruption movement. He can be contacted at contact@arappor.org. Views expressed are personal). (Email your feedback to southpole.toi@timesgroup.com)

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