The Lokpal Search Committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai has forwarded three panels of names for chairperson, judicial members and non-judicial members to the selection committee, the Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court.
Attorney General KK Venugopal informed a Bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi that the shortlisted names had already been sent to the selection committee led by the Prime Minister.
Other members on the selection panel are the Lok Sabha Speaker, CJI or his nominee, Leader of Opposition and an eminent jurist. The panel will now take decision on appointing India’s first ever Lokpal and its members.
As there was no Leader of Opposition, the leader of the Congress Legislature Party in the Lok Sabha was invited to the meeting as a special invitee, but he (Mallikarjun Kharge) was not attending the meetings, Venugopal told the Bench.
The Attorney General told the Bench that 10 names had been shortlisted for the post of Lokpal chairperson while five names each for judicial and non-judicial members.
The CJI sought to know the possible date for the selection committee meeting and asked the Attorney General to inform the top court in 10 days the likely date of meeting to select the Lokpal chairman and members.
On behalf of petitioner Common Cause, advocate Prashant Bhushan requested the Bench that the shortlisted names be uploaded on the government website to make the process transparent. People should be allowed to file objections, he said.
However, CJI Gogoi immediately turned it down, saying there was no provision in the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, which allowed inviting objections from the public to the names recommended for appointment.
“Transparency is a subjective term. You have done good work but there has to be a limit somewhere. You have to stop. We don’t think the names are required to be put in the public domain,” the CJI told Bhushan.
The Supreme Court had on January 17 asked the Lokpal search committee headed by Justice Desai to prepare a panel of names by the end of February for consideration of the selection committee for appointment of India’s first ombudsman.
The top court is hearing a PIL filed by NGO Common Cause seeking a direction to the government to appoint the Lokpal expeditiously.
Enacted in 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 states were also dithering in appointing Lokayuktas.
Bhushan has been demanding that there should be transparency in the functioning of even the search committee and that the criteria followed by it should be made public.
But the Bench had rejected it on January 17 and asked Bhushan to have faith in the committee headed by a former Supreme Court judge and see things in a positive manner.
“Mr Bhushan, try to see things positively, the world will be better to you,” the CJI had told Bhushan on the last date of hearing.
The Centre on September 27, 2018, had constituted an eight-member search committee headed by Justice Desai to recommend names to the selection panel for appointment of India’s first Lokpal.
Other members of the search committee are former chief of State Bank of India Arundhati Bhattacharya, Prasar Bharati chairperson A Surya Prakash, Indian Space Research Organisation head AS Kiran Kumar, former judge of Allahabad High Court Sakha Ram Singh Yadav, former Gujarat Police head Shabbirhusein S Khandwawala, retired IAS officer of Rajasthan cadre Lalit K Panwar, and former Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar.
The search committee will prepare a panel of names and forward it to the selection committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Lok Sabha Speaker, leader of the single largest opposition party and an eminent jurist (Mukul Rohatgi). Congress leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has been boycotting the selection panel meetings.
Piqued over inordinate delay in selection of Lokpal, the Supreme Court had on January 4 asked the Centre to spell out details of the steps taken since September last to set up a search committee for selection of India’s first anti-corruption watchdog.
Accusing the government of dilly-dallying, Common Cause had moved a contempt plea against the government for its failure to appoint the Lokpal despite the court’s direction.
In its April 27, 2017 verdict, the Supreme Court had termed the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, an eminently workable piece of legislation which “does not create any bar to the enforcement of the provisions”.
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, it had said.
