‘Much time has elapsed’: SC pulls up Centre on delay in appointing Lokpal

‘Much time has elapsed’: SC pulls up Centre on delay in appointing Lokpal

The Supreme Court today questioned the government over the delay in appointment of the Lokpal, directing it to file a fresh affidavit listing the steps taken in the last four months.

“We may tell you much time has elapsed. Something needs to be done,” the bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said, expressing its displeasure with the delay in appointing the anti-corruption ombudsman.

The law to set up the Lokpal had come into force four years ago.

But the government hasn’t made a single appointment, for one reason or the other. It had in September named an eight-member search committee to recommend names for chairperson and members of the Lokpal. A ministry of personnel order said the committee would be headed by former Supreme Court judge, Ranjana Prakash Desai.

The top court had on July 24 last year rejected as “wholly unsatisfactory” the Centre’s submission on the issue of setting up of a search committee for the Lokpal and demanded a “better affidavit” within four weeks.

When the case came up again today, the government’s top law officer KK Venugopal started reading out the steps taken by the government to make the appointment. But the court told him they would need more than just a note.

“We do not go by the note. Please file an affidavit on record,” the bench said. The court has put the next hearing for January 17.

The selection of a Lokpal to run it has been stuck on the question of who should be on the appointment panel.

On December 11, the Supreme Court had issued notice on a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking to declare that a leader of opposition in any high-powered appointment committee should be read as leader of the single largest opposition party in the House.

A bench of Chief Justice Gogoi and Justice Kaul agreed to examine this point raised in the PIL filed by NGO Youth For Equality.

Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan had told that though the government has carried out changes in the laws to appoint the Chief Vigilance Commissioner, the Central Bureau of Investigation’s director and the Chief Information Commissioner, the same is yet to be done for the appointment of National Human Rights Commission chairperson and the Lokpal.

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