Sunday, April 17, 2011

Drafting LokPal

Institutionally, India’s law enforcement system has been suffering for decades due to the lack of an executive and independent Prosecutor. Lokpal bill appears to be intended to address this gap with respect to corruption by appointing Lokpal as the independent prosecutor for corruption cases.

For effective functioning of the Lokpal institution, drafters of the law need to prioritize their attention on the following 3 critical elements.

Appointment
Appointment of Lokpal members should be in a way that provides legitimacy to the institution and at the same time ensure appointment of independent and qualified persons who would not be influenced by political considerations of people who appointed them. This would be a difficult balancing act especially since in order to provide legitimacy, the appointment process need to be primarily influenced by the political/parliamentary leadership. I would presume appointment models for the Chief Election Commission or the US Supreme Court justices may provide acceptable starting point for negotiations on this matter in additions to the proposal already included in the jan draft.

Power to take up cases, investigate and prosecute on its own will
Needless to say, operational effectiveness of Lokpal institution will be primarily dependent on this power. I hope civil society will resist any attempt to dilute the concerned provisions in the jan lokpal draft.

Tools/resources to ensure speedy investigation and prosecution of cases by Lokpal
In order to ensure successful prosecution of cases, Lokpal needs to interface with other institutions such as government investigative agencies and courts. For investigation purposes, in addition to the proposed oversight over CBI anti-corruption wing and CVC, Lokpal should be able to deputize any other central investigative agencies for investigations even though such agencies may not directly report to Lokpal. Furthermore, a fast tracked trial process should be introduced by law within judicial courts and central administrative tribunals for cases prosecuted by Lokpal. As such, processes need to be streamlined to reduce delay in investigation and trial.

This is a historic moment for India. If an effective Lokpal commission is instituted in the center and Lokayukthas in states, it will make huge difference in deterring corruption and modernizing government institutions to address aspirations of a billion + Indians! I hope there is enough political will and pressure to see this through.

No comments: