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| Awaiting decent burial! J&K govt unable to revive defunct State Accountability Commission | | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
JAMMU, Mar 10: Despite having failed to make any significant contribution towards eradicating menace of corruption from the political corridors, the much trumpeted state Accountability Commission (SAC) is surviving on two officials and a load of files with cases against 18 former ministers gathering dust.
Commission's much purported "ahtisab" drive has stagnated since state government has failed to nominate its Chairperson and members from among the available retired legal luminaries of the state. Barring those high profile cases which have been stayed by the state high court, figure of pending cases has touched 320 with highest number of cases i.e. 200 from Jammu region.
Working of commission is presently being looked after by a secretary alongwith two member team of officers. Most of the rooms are locked and more importantly, official car meant for chairperson of the commission is rusting inside the premises. People have stopped frequenting the commission and if the insiders are to be believed, the number of complaints being received in the defunct commission has gone from 4 to 0 per day.
Inapt failure of the state government in finding fitting replacements of its first Chairperson Late Justice R.P. Sethi and thereafter, of its adhoc Chairpersons, firstly controversial Justice Girdhari Lal Raina and thereafter, Justice Muzaffar Jan has mutilated credibility of the commission.
SAC records bear testimony to the fact that around 1931 complaints have been lodged with the commission since August 2005, out of which commission recommended 20 cases to the government for prosecution. 11 of these cases in which involvement of high profile dignitaries surfaced have been stayed by the state high court.
Furthermore, out of 1931 complaints, commission dismissed around 1160 on account of errors in the complainant's application. The legal word used for these complaints is "dismissed in default." 265 other complaints were dismissed on merit and 191 were disposed off as settled by the commission. 250 cases which have been instituted and where inquires are yet to be ordered, are pending for disposal.
SAC suffered the first bottleneck when the then government could not make it functional for almost two years after the passage of the bill for constituting this commission in September 2005 with retired late Justice R.P.Sethi as its Chairman. An upright person, Late Sethi's work unnerved both the ministerial and bureaucratic circles.
During Late Justice Sethi's tenure, complaints were lodged against some senior ministers and bureaucrats of the coalition government. Not only were the complaints lodged but action was also initiated in most of them. However, legislators armed with the dagger of amendment reduced the commission merely to a paper tiger and scuttled its powers to act vehemently against those involved in various scams and scandals.
Thereafter, Sethi was forced to resign under bizarre circumstances. Later, it was learnt that reason behind the resignation of Justice Sethi was curtailing of the powers of the commission and conversion of SAC to a three-member body from a single-member one. The last provocation reportedly was the government order that SAC would move to Srinagar from here for summer months like other departments.
Late Sethi considered it as an encroachment on the discretion of the commission and resolved not to comply with the government order. Finally on May 5, 2006 i.e. within eight months of his assuming the office, Justice Sethi reigned. Later Justice Girdhari Lal Raina, who was member of the commission despite not possessing the requisite qualification served as its acting Chairman till his retirement in 2008 while as its lone member Justice Muzaffar Jan retired in October 2009.
Taking note of government's failure to appoint the panel for SAC, Jammu and Kashmir High Court had on November 14 directed the state government to appoint its chairperson without any further delay or wind up the SAC. Present coalition government headed by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah did make an attempt to revive the commission but Raj Bhawan quietly vetoed a major recommendation of Omar Abdullah-led coalition government related to constitution of long defunct Jammu and Kashmir State Accountability Commission.
The recommendation formulated at November 24, 2009 meeting of the constitutionally empowered selection panel sought governor's endorsement for appointment of two former high court judges, Justice (retd) Yash Paul Nargotra and Justice (retd) Basheer Ahmad Kirmani, as members of State Accountability Commission (SAC) but, significantly, leaving out the all important headship of anti-graft commission.
The members of the selection panel are Chief Minister, leader of the opposition, Chief Justice, Law minister and Speaker of state legislative assembly. The absence of leader of the opposition, Mehbooba Mufti in this case, who was away on Haj pilgrimage as part of official Hajj delegation to Saudi Arabia, appeared to have become one of the main grounds for governor NN Vohra's rejection of the panel's recommendation.
It has been reliably learnt that at the November 24 meeting, an attempt was made to select one of the former high court Chief Justices as chairperson of SAC. However, the move fell through as some members of the panel disagreed over the choice of appointee.
Questions were immediately raised in media, political and public circles over fairness of selection in the absence of leader of the opposition and also on the ground that even with appointment of two retired judges, constitution of commission was incomplete. Obviously, coalition government thought otherwise and ignored these objections.
Accordingly, the half-backed recommendation was dispatched by the Chief Minister to Raj Bhawan for governor's approval on November 25, 2009 for approval as well as for his signature for appointment of two members to make commission functional. Governor perused the proposal on November 30, 2009.
The recommendatory proposal was returned by the Governor's office on December 11, 2009 while the law department received it on December 15, 2009. It needs to be mentioned here that when governor took its own time to vet the proposal and formulate its opinion, the state government started feeling shaky on this account.
Behind the scene, moves were made to get the proposal through. But at the end, the governor went with his own independent opinion. The recommendation was rejected with the advice to redo the exercise in prescribed proper manner and convene another meeting of statutory committee for appointment of chairperson as well as members of the SAC after ascertaining availability and convenience of constitutional dignitaries representing the said committee. —Early Times Report |
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