[HumJanenge] Graft watchdog defunct for years in WB

Graft watchdog defunct for years
SOUMEN BHATTACHARJEE

The Telegraph, 11 April, 2011, Kolkata
 Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110411/jsp/calcutta/story_13824999.jsp
 
Graft watchdog defunct for years
SOUMEN BHATTACHARJEE
 
The locked lokayukta office at Bhawani Bhavan. (Amit Datta)

The office of the lokayukta, empowered to probe complaints of misconduct and corruption lodged by people against elected representatives in the state, has remained shut since February 2009.
Bengal has had only one lokayukta, retired justice Samaresh Banerjee. No one has been appointed to the post since his three-year tenure ended.
The West Bengal Lokayukta Bill 2001 was passed in the Assembly in 2003 and notified the next year. Under the act, the governor appoints the lokayukta on the recommendation of the chief minister, Assembly Speaker and the leader of the Opposition.
The lokayukta was initially supposed to investigate complaints against elected representatives, from the panchayat level to the chief minister, and other "public servants" and identify the guilty to the government. Since 2007 only elected representatives have been within its purview.
The lokayukta's recommendations are not binding.
A number of other states have their own lokayuktas. The proposed Lok Pal bill, seeking modifications to which activist Anna Hazare had been fasting in New Delhi, is the Centre's equivalent of the Lokayukta bill but with a wider scope.
In the two years that Bengal had a lokayukta, the Bhawani Bhavan office received nearly 3,000 complaints against elected representatives belonging to the CPM, Trinamul Congress, Congress and other political parties.
"Of these, nearly 700 were serious in nature and dealt with the corruption of leaders. Many of the allegations had been investigated and several were found to be true," said an official who used to work for the lokayukta.
"We found gross anomalies in the conduct of senior CPM leaders regarding allotment of land to a hotel on the EM Bypass. We also received several complaints against elected representatives owing allegiance to Trinamul," said another former lokayukta official.
"Double standard has been maintained regarding this institution since its inception. In the absence of a lokayukta, thousands of complaints are lying at the office unattended," said retired justice Banerjee.
The sanctioned staff strength of the lokayukta was 18 but it had only seven employees, who have since been transferred to other departments. A part of the office was handed over to the information commission in December 2009.
"It is unfortunate that an office like lokayukta is not functional in the state for so long," said RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal, who will be a part of the committee that will draft the Lok Pal Bill.
Rights activist Anindya Kishor Das said they had asked the government to fill up the lokayukta post but to no avail.
Sources at Writers' said the government's reluctance to allow the institution to function properly was apparent from the time the bill was passed. Banerjee had been appointed the lokayukta in 2008 but was allotted office a year later.
"Our office technically started functioning in February 2007. Thus by February 2009, much of Samaresh Banerjee's three-year tenure was over," said a former employee of the office.
On September 5, 2007, the state government had issued a notification barring the lokayukta from investigating corruption complaints against senior government officials.
"I was never consulted regarding the appointment of the lokayukta," said Partha Chatterjee, the leader of the Opposition. He did not mention that his party had stopped communicating with the government.
State chief secretary Samar Ghosh said the process to appoint a lokayukta would start after the elections. "There were some technical problems in appointing a lokayukta earlier."