The Uttarakhand High Court has recently directed the state government to appoint the Lokayukta within three months.
The court directed that remuneration for the Lokayukta office personnel should be withheld until the selection of the anti-corruption ombudsman is completed. It further added that the government retains the prerogative to allocate tasks to these individuals from alternate departments and remunerate them correspondingly.
A division bench of Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Rakesh Thapliyal passed the order in response to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) which highlighted the expenditure of considerable amounts of money on the Lokayukta’s office without the requisite head of the anti-corruption entity being appointed.
Although the State had sought a six-month extension from the court to finalize the appointment of the Lokayukta, the division bench granted a three-month period for this purpose.
The PIL filed by Ravi Shankar Joshi, a resident of Haldwani, highlighted that despite allocating an annual budget of Rs 2 to 3 crore for the institution, the state government had not yet designated a Lokayukta. The petition further underscored the prevalence of various scandals in Uttarakhand, necessitating even the most minor cases to be escalated to the High Court.
The petition emphasized the current circumstance where all investigative bodies in the state are under governmental jurisdiction. Presently, there is no investigative agency in Uttarakhand with the authority to initiate a corruption case against any bureaucrat without prior authorization from the government. In light of this, the petition stressed the urgency of expeditiously filling the vacant Lokayukta position.
