SC asks 11 states why they have not appointed Lokayukta

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 23

The Supreme Court on Friday pulled up 11 states for not appointed lokayuktas and uplokayuktas, even five years after the enactment of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, and asked their chief secretaries to explain in two weeks as to why they dithered.

“The chief secretaries of the aforesaid 11 states shall inform the court within two weeks as to whether steps have been taken for appointment of Lokyukta/Uplokayukta and if so the stage thereof. The reasons for non-appointment of Lokayukta/Uplokayukta in the aforesaid states be also laid before the court in the aforesaid affidavit(s) to be filed by the Chief Secretaries,” the top court said.

The states which have not appointed lokayukta or uplokayukta are: Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, West Bengal and Arunachal Pradesh.

The chief secretaries of these states have been asked to specify the deadline by which they would appoint a Lokayukta as required under the Act.

The order came from a Bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, which also asked the Odisha Chief Secretary to inform it if Lokayuka and Uplokayukta were functional as there was no information available about any such appointment in the state.

Enacted in December 2013, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act received presidential assent on January 1, 2014, and came into force on January 16, 2014. However, the first Lokpal is yet to be appointed and many stated were also dithering in appointing lokayuktas.

The Bench — which is seized of a PIL filed by Delhi BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay seeking a direction to states to take necessary measures for effective functioning of Lokayuktas — asked his counsel Gopal Shankarnaryanan to name the states which had appointed or not appointed lokayuktas.

As Shankarnaryanan said many states had appointed lokayuktas while several others had not, the Bench said, “We want the exact figure. This is not the answer we expect from a counsel in a case of such a magnitude.”

The Bench, which has also been pushing the Centre to appoint a Lokpal, posted the matter further hearing on April 12.

Last month, Attorney-General K K Venugopal had told the court that the process for appointing Lokpal at the Centre was on. The selection panel comprising the Prime Minister, Chief Justice of India, Speaker of Lok Sabha met on March but leader of the largest Opposition party Mallikarjun Kharge boycotted it.

Terming the Act as “an eminently workable piece of legislation”, the top court had in 2017 said there was no justification to keep the enforcement of the Lokpal Act suspended till the proposed amendments, including on the issue of the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, were cleared by Parliament.