Until last week, I remembered Justice (retd) AM Khanwilkar as the author of one of the worst judgments in judicial history when it comes to fundamental right to life and personal liberty. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of many draconian provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), including the Enforcement Directorate’s virtually arbitrary powers to carry out arrest, search, and seizure, reversed burden of proof on the accused, self-incriminating statements, etc. ‘Guilty until proven innocent’ became the new maxim of law after that division bench ruling authored by Justice Khanwilkar. In my very limited understanding of law, in terms of right to personal liberty, it was the second–worst judgment after the 1976 ADM Jabalpur case verdict. Justice Khanwilkar authored this ruling just two days before his retirement in July 2022, giving a huge boost to the ED and the Narendra Modi-led government.
In February last year, the former Supreme Court judge was appointed chairperson of the Lokpal, India’s anti-corruption ombudsman. He will now be remembered for ‘humanising’ the Lokpal—the ombudsman that was once projected by activists Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal as the god of justice like Shani Dev or Dharmaraja Yama for the corrupt people. This comes through the Lokpal’s tender for seven luxury BMW cars—one each for chairperson Khanwilkar and other members—collectively worth around Rs 5 crore.
Come to think of it, they are also human. If Narendra Modi could switch from Scorpio to BMW after being sworn in as the Prime Minister in 2014, those who have powers to investigate him can also ride a BMW, can’t they? The only problem is that the Lokpal has turned out to be the god of small things, as my colleague Apoorva Mandhani’s brilliant analysis of its performance shows.
She analysed 620 final orders available on the Lokpal website since 2023. Since 2019, the Lokpal ordered investigations in only 34 cases and granted prosecution for sanction in just seven cases. They involved bank officials or public servants and the complaints were relatively minor like embezzling employees’ salaries and fake travel bills.
The only prominent names who have faced investigations by Lokpal so far are Trinamool Congress (TMC) parliamentarian Mahua Moitra and the late Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) chief Shibu Soren — both on the complaints by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey. The Lokpal rejected a complaint against PM Modi last year while the status of four additional complaints filed against the PM remains unclear.
Now you know why we are calling Lokpal the god of small things (with apologies to Arundhati Roy). When PM Modi talks of running a corruption-free government, he may very well invite Lokpal chairperson Justice (retd) Khanwilkar to endorse it.
Vacant posts, pending appeals
But why talk about the Lokpal only? What about the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), an autonomous constitutional authority that hit the headlines almost everyday during the Manmohan Singh government. Remember the alleged Commonwealth Games (CWG) and 2G spectrum scams? And the damning performance audits of government schemes? Then-CAG Vinod Rai became a rock star as the Opposition latched on to CAG reports, one after another, to attack the Manmohan Singh government.
What has changed now? Well, CAG reports are still coming but the old bites and stings have gone missing. The CAG is still unsparing in some cases but the BJP may not mind it at all. For instance, in multiple reports, the CAG indicted the previous Arvind Kejriwal-led government in Delhi for loss to the exchequer due to the liquor policy, ‘grossly mismanaged’ Covid funds, financial mismanagement in the Delhi Transport Corporation, etc. One of the rare occasions when the CAG found irregularities in something done by a ministry at the Centre was when it flagged massive cost overruns in the construction of the Dwarka Expressway. Road Transport and Highway Minister Nitin Gadkari was left red-faced by the CAG report. To cut the long story short, PM Modi can call the CAG, too, to endorse his claim about running a corruption-free government.
The Right to Information Act was once instrumental in uncovering many a scam—the Adarsh Housing Society scam in Maharashtra, to name just one.
It stands mostly defanged today. As it is, the chief information commissioner’s post is vacant and so are the posts of eight commissioners. The Central Information Commission has been functioning with just two commissioners, with over 25,000 appeals and complaints reportedly pending.
In an article in The Indian Express, titled The RTI is dead. Long Live the RTI, early this month, Nikhil Dey and Aruna Roy, who led the RTI movement in the country, pointed out the latest attempt to undermine it: “Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) threatens to completely destroy the power and utility of the RTI Act… Section 44(3) amends the RTI Act by essentially using the excuse of protecting ‘privacy’ and ‘personal information’ to ensure that, after the Act is notified, nobody will be entitled to ask for, or obtain, the name of any person for their acts of omission and commission.”
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Modi is not Nehru
What are the other ways a scam or scandal could surface? We can’t talk about the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), of course. And don’t blame the Modi government for turning them into political instruments. They always were. Today, you can discuss the scale of brazenness, at best. There was also a time when the Central Vigilance Commission would make headlines. Not in the past decade or so, though.
Then there were troublesome, conscientious public servants who would decide to become whistleblowers. Let’s look at just two who had taken on the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Haryana government over corruption in the state—IAS officer Ashok Khemka and IFS officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi. Both were heroes for the BJP when it was in the Opposition. When the BJP came to power at the Centre and in the state in 2014, these two officers became persona non grata again. Khemka was to find out soon that the Modi government wasn’t keen on bringing him to the Centre.
And the Manohar Lal Khattar government in Haryana wasn’t very fond of the whistleblower-bureaucrat either. He retired last April, having spent the last few years in relative anonymity. Sanjiv Chaturvedi didn’t find favour with the Modi government either. He is fighting a legal battle for central deputation.
The fate of these two anti-corruption warriors has delivered a clear message to the entire civil services fraternity.
Who else would uncover corruption scandals today? Public representatives, probably. Remember how Feroze Gandhi had exposed the Mundhra scandal in Parliament, which led to then-finance minister TT Krishnamachari’s resignation, much to the embarrassment of the former’s father-in-law and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
The scandal was about the investment of Rs 1.26 crore made by Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) in the shares of Kolkata-based businessman Haridas Mundhra’s companies in 1957. Sixty-eight years later, a The Washington Post report about the Modi government’s plan to steer $3.9 billion LIC funds into Adani Group companies has triggered a huge political row.
Trust Feroze Gandhi’s grandson, Rahul Gandhi, to train his guns at PM Modi over this. But Modi is not Nehru who had set up a committee to investigate the allegations leading to TTK’s ouster. The Modi government is known to brazen it out with the Opposition, invariably wearing the latter down.
All anti-graft bodies, institutions, and mechanisms are either in suspended animation or atrophying as PM Modi showcases his taint-free government. They would rather go for a BMW ride.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)