Ten months after the Supreme Court ordered the Centre to appoint a Lokpal, and five years after the passage of the Lokpal and Lokayukta Act, 2013, the Congress told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Thursday’s meeting of the Lokpal Selection Committee on Thursday was a sham. The principal opposition party’s leader in the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, said he had decided to not attend the meeting because as a “mere special invitee”, he would have no say in the Lokpal’s appointment.

In a letter to the PM, Kharge said he would not legitimise the government’s deliberate attempt to “exclude the voice of the Opposition in the selection of Lokpal”.

What the Act says

The Lokpal Act provides for a Selection Committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Speaker, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, the Chief Justice of India or a judge of the Supreme Court appointed by the CJI, and an eminent jurist.

The Congress, which is the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha, still does not have the numbers — 10 per cent of the Lok Sabha’s strength — for its leader to be the Leader of Opposition (LoP).

Although the party has underlined the Salary and Allowances of the Leader of Opposition (in Parliament) Act, 1977 to assert that the largest opposition party should get the LoP’s post, the government has relied on the rulings of the GV Mavalankar, the Lok Sabha’s first Speaker. Mavalankar had denied the LoP status to the leader of biggest opposition party, and succesive Speakers had followed suit during the period between 1947-64, when Jawaharlal Nehru was PM.

The Centre’s inaction

In the meantime, activists campaigning for the appointment of the Lokpal have asserted that the government is deliberately dragging its feet on the matter, and resisting attempts to strengthen the institutional framework to fight corruption in high places. In a PIL filed before the Supreme Court, lawyer Prashant Bhushan had argued that the government is using the LoP as an excuse.

In response to a contempt petition filed by Common Cause against Supreme Court directive on Lokpal appointment not being implemented, the Centre argued last month that a meeting would be held on March 1 for the purpose.

However, the Lokpal Selection Committee was constituted with the rider that Kharge, the leader of the largest opposition party, would only be a ‘special invitee’.

“A special invitee invitation is a concerted effort to exclude the independent voice of the Opposition altogether from the selection process of the most important anti-corruption watchdog,” Kharge said in his letter to the PM.

The Congress leader has said that this negates the letter and spirit of the Lokpal and Lokayukta Act, 2013, and accused the government of adopting this route as a mere paper formality rather than seek any meaningful and constructive participation. Kharge said that if the government is serious about the appointment of the anti-corruption watchdog, it must bring an ordinance in the shape of an amending Bill, which he sent along with his letter.

He alleged that while the Government has brought out amendments in other Acts to replace the Leader of Opposition to leader of single largest party in opposition, it has not done so in the Lokpal Act. “My mere presence as special invitee without rights of participation, recording of my opinion and voting would be a mere eyewash, ostensibly aimed at showcasing the participation of the opposition in the selection process,” he said in his letter.

Related Topics