Thursday, March 28, 2013

Can we See Some Accountability... Please?

While there are Mixed Reactions over The Impact of SC’s Verdict on P. J. Thomas’ Appointment as CVC, The Nation Actually needs to Focus on Politicians who run The Show.

The office of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the apex vigilance institution, has lately been in the news for all the wrong reasons. In a first of its kind in India, a three-member Supreme Court (SC) bench on March 3 quashed appointment of P. J. Thomas, a 1973-batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre, declaring it as “un est” in law.

Thomas’ current woes date back to a palmolein import case in 1991 when he was the Food Secretary in the Congress-led UDF government in Kerala. In 1996, the Left government in Kearla had ordered a vigilance inquiry into the cabinet decision taken by the then Congress-led Government to import 15,000 metric tonne of palmolein oil, which allegedly caused a revenue loss of Rs.20 million to the state. Thomas was selected to the post in September, 2010, by a committee consisting of the PM, Union Home minister P. Chidambaram and Leader of Opposition, Sushma Swaraj.

Meanwhile, with the Prime Minister accepting responsibility for the “error in judgement” as the final signing authority that approved Thomas’ appointment as CVC, the move has just become a blessing in disguise that Thomas would like. According to Thomas’ counsel Wills Mathews, Thomas has now moved to SC challenging the very legality of the verdict that set aside his appointment as CVC. “The constitutional provisions mandate that the matter be heard by a five-judge bench as opposed to the three-judge bench that handed the verdict in this case. Moreover, the selection of Thomas was carried out by a government committee and the error has been accepted by the PM himself,” Mathews told B&E. When asked about the future course of action, Mathews said that since the error had been committed by the Union of India, it was for the government to rectify it. “Once the mistake is corrected, Thomas will automatically be reinstated,” he said.

Amidst all this chaos also lies a threat to the confidence of whistleblowers who had utmost faith in the CVC when it came to reporting matters pertaining to corruption in government offices. For Dhanraj Singh (name changed on request), a whistleblower involved in bringing the Chairman of a CPSE to book after he took matters to the CVC, “Reporting matters to the CVC is not a routine affair and takes a lot of courage to go ahead with pursuing the matter due to the constant fear of consequences.” While getting matters attended to has been a cause of concern, there is also sheer disappointment when one finds that the appointment of the highest anti-corruption authority was taken lightly. “The anxiety among many of us is on how future complaints will be treated,” Dhanraj adds. Alongside this sense of disappointment within a section of “honest” government servants, there is also a separate school of thought. “The Apex court’s verdict annulling the appointment of the CVC has come as a major jolt to the government and we can expect an overhaul in the manner in which the anti-corruption watchdog functions. We expect more sincerity from the CVC now,” says another whistleblower on condition of anonimity.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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