1) The document discusses various issues and proposals related to strengthening anti-corruption institutions like the Lokpal bill, CAG, CVC and CBI in India. 2) It argues that instead of creating a new parallel anti-corruption body like the Lokpal, existing institutions like the CAG, CVC and CBI should be reformed, given more independence and resources to effectively tackle corruption. 3) The author proposes various reforms like making the CAG and CVC multi-member bodies, increasing their powers, budgets and staffing to properly investigate all government agencies and departments currently under their purview.

1. Lokpal Bill: Building Capacity in the CAG, CVC and CBI
Barun Kumar Basu
US Justice Louis Brandeis said, ―Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher.
For good or for ill, it teaches people by example. If the government becomes the law-breaker, it
breeds contempt for law and invites every man to become a law unto himself.‖ A euphoric nation
therefore loudly applauded as a desperate government, reeling from a slew of mega corruption
cases, meekly caved into Anna Hazare‘s demand for a joint drafting committee for the Lokpal
Bill. The Bill itself makes for interesting reading. At once, the Lokpal is judge and prosecutor. It
seeks an amalgam of the CAG, CVC and CBI, public policy evaluators and ombudsman
empowered by a mish-mash of Central Civil Service Rules and the Special Police Establishment
(SPEA) and Prevention of Corruption Acts (PCA).
In democratic India, an omnipresent Lokpal cannot be the arbiter of our nation‘s destiny,
indeed our conscience-keeper. Institutional integrity must not be wished away nor democratic
conventions of separation of powers summarily jettisoned. Nietzsche‘s warning that ―whoever
fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster‖ is pertinent in
this regard. The Lokpal should therefore be made a five-member body comprising three jurists, a
civil servant and a prominent citizen from outside governments and be renamed the National
Accountability Commission. The Commission would exercise the powers of a High Court with
appeals lying only to the Supreme Court. All CBI Courts under the PCA would stand transferred
to the Commission and work as benches for it. Appeals in corruption cases would lie only before
the Commission. This would ease the pressure on High Courts that already have crores of
pending cases compounded by a shortage of nearly 300 judges. Unless the Commission is also
assured of administrative and financial independence from the executive, its efforts to enforce
accountability fearlessly would remain severely constrained as has been the case with the CAG
and CVC.
However, this alone is not enough. The Commission must also draft an enforceable and
definite timeline within which all pending cases would be decided, including in appeal, if any.
Hearings would be mandatorily held by the Commission and its benches held on a day-to-day
basis to clear the backlog if any example is to be set. GOI would have to provide full staff and
judge complements to the Commission and its benches within a stipulated time frame. Changes
in the relevant Acts and Rules that preclude unsanctioned action against officers of the rank of
Joint Secretary to GOI and above and outright dismissal of civil servants caught red-handed
accepting bribes or unable to satisfactorily explain their unaccounted wealth within a week of
being found, forfeiture of ill-gotten property within a month, etc. would also have to be
simultaneously set in motion by GOI. What happens to the CAG, CVC and CBI then?
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2. Although the CVC, CBI and CAG of India have rendered yeoman service in highlighting
corruption and national waste, yet the efforts of these institutions have not yielded the desired
results, mainly owing to structural and legal constraints. The Constitution mandates CAG as an
advisory body even as it endows it with constitutional status while the CVC is a statutory but
advisory body. Both are incestuously headed by retired civil servants whose political affiliations
rather than merit determine their appointment. The CAG reports to Parliament‘s overburdened
Public Accounts and Public Undertakings Committees that too enjoy only advisory powers. The
CAG, CVC and CBI are also dependent on uncertain government grants and conformity with
civil service rules for their human resources. The CAG has only about 500-600 officers in the
Indian Audit and Accounts Service and a staff of about 50,000 when compared to the less than
300 officers and staff of the CVC. These skeleton staff covers about 130 GOI Ministries and
departments and their several thousand subordinate and attached offices, 26 states and Union
Territories, few thousand PSUs and Autonomous Bodies, several thousand panchayats, et al. The
CVC is also charged with covering the vast financial services sector of our economy. The CBI
covers the entire national government plus much more with its skeleton staff. Therefore CAG,
CVC and CBI need to be empowered to create their own establishments, independent of the
other civil services, a captive budget, engage experts at salaries determined by the institutions,
hire interns and absorb deserving ones into the Indian Audit and Accounts Service or CVC/CBI‘s
service, et al instead of creating a parallel authority in the Lokpal.
Recruitment rules for the posts of CAG and CVC/VCs currently favor only
superannuating bureaucrats. Essential qualifications should therefore be prescribed for posts of
the CAG and CVC and age restriction on such posts relaxed to 70 years or six years of service,
whichever is earlier. The CAG and CVC/VCs should also be debarred from any form of
employment under the Govt. and/or under the Constitution or in the private sector after
superannuation/resignation from service. Like the CVC, the CAG too should be a three-member
body with a legal & public policy, accounting & audit and administrative member each on the
lines of the Audit Commission in France. The VK Shunglu panel too has recently proposed a
multi-member CAG, although this was not suggested while Mr. Shunglu himself was the CAG.
The archaic and toothless CAG‘s (DPC) Act, 1971 needs to be repealed and the draft Public
Audit Bill submitted by CAG to GOI urgently passed in Parliament. In its eagerness to check the
corruption monster, the Jan Lokpal Bill ignores fundamental infirmities in the legal
environments, staffing and budgets of the CAG, CVC and CBI over the decades.
The CBI too is severely understaffed by a third and often has to rely on outside expert
opinion particularly in matters relating to white-collar corruption. The tendency to view all
investigations and intelligence gathering, domestic or foreign, as solely a policial activity is often
counterproductive and causes precious time to be lost. Warren Buffet‘s warning is apt, ―In
looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they
don't have the first, the other two will kill you.‖ Instead of looking for police officers that States
are unwilling to remove from law and order duties, the CBI‘s staffing should include officers on
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3. deputation from GOI‘s specialist Central Services and departments that would also provide in-
house domain expertise to it. The CBI should also look at hiring young graduates as interns and
training them up as professional investigators. Like CAG and CVC, the CBI needs to be freed
from the clutches of civil service regulations and have a captive budget of its own. The FBI is
not all police but its effectiveness is awesome – a possible role model not just in name. The
CBI‘s independence from the CVC needs to be urgently restored and it should form part of the
Prime Minister‘s Office.
Denial of records and inordinate delays in their release by audited offices to CAG is
frequent as are delayed or no replies to audit objections. Similarly, the advice of the CVC is
often not paid heed to or sanctions for prosecution withheld. The CAG and CVC also do not
have powers of search and seizure, mandated examination of civil servants, contractors and
suppliers, recoveries of lost revenue, etc. or the powers of a civil court. Unpunished dilatory
tactics by accused public servants similarly, makes a mockery of the CBI‘s cases. Evidently, the
draftsmen of the Jan Lokpal Bill, like good country doctors, believe that it is better to chop off
the head to cure the headache. Instead of attempting to depoliticize, build capacity and add teeth
to established structures, the Bill proposes a fundamental change in the Constitution‘s separation
of powers. The draftsmen also seem to suffer from the mistaken belief that public servants have
no fundamental rights even if they are caught red-handed. Therefore the Lok Pal cannot be a
parallel khap panchayat.
Hazare‘s ‗victory‘ is a hard-earned one. It would indeed be this nation‘s greatest
misfortune if such unparalleled public support did not bring accountability of its governors.
Cicero aptly put it, "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive
treason from within….the traitor is the plague.‖ Institutions like the CAG and CVC have stood
us in good stead for the first half-century after Independence. It is time to empower these
agencies to tackle white collar crime and bring in men and women of integrity and knowledge to
lead and staff them. As Samuel Johnson pithily put it, ―integrity without knowledge is weak and
useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.‖
The author is a former civil servant who has served as Ambassador of India in Cuba, Chile and
Bolivia. He also served as Director of the erstwhile Historical Research Division in the Ministry
of External Affairs and was a Visiting Fellow at the Research Institute on Communist Affairs at
Columbia University (USA) while Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski was its Director. He has also
represented India in international fora and is an expert on the Sino-Soviet border dispute and
India’s border issues with Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
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4. Bringing in prominent citizens of established integrity and knowledge as Ministers and
Secretaries to Govt. of India in IT, Commerce, Finance, Power or Rural Development ministries,
metropolitan Municipal Commissioners, CIC, CAG, CVC and CEC would certainly break the
jaded and discredited Burra Babu culture at policy-making levels of the Govt. of India. Nandan
Nilekani now and NP Sen, Homi Bhaba, Vikram Sarabhai, SS Bhatnagar, K. Zachariah, PC
Mahalanobis, S. Gopal, Mantosh Sondhi in the past, are shining examples of men from outside
that joined government without the baggage of the past. Even among bureaucrats, LK Jha, IG
Patel, Sir Girija Bajpai, NR Pillai, Arun Roy, S. Ranganathan, V Narahari Rao and Subimal Dutt
spring to mind – not all of them came from a single part of the civil service and all were men of
sterling integrity who did not suffer deficits of ethics and governance. With their extensive
domain knowledge and courage of conviction, they created institutions and policy, mostly
missing. Should the government not therefore earmark 50% posts in the Central Secretariat at
Joint Secretary/Additional Secretary/Secretary for outsiders?
Over the last six decades, suitability-neutral recruitments to the bureaucracy in the guise
of social, geographical, economic and linguistic equity after Independence have adversely altered
the complexion of the civil service and allowed segments of it to become powerful, clannish,
greatly corrupt, grossly inefficient and insufferably arrogant. Party to such nepotism is the
Minister who, as Edward Gibbon said is ―an absolute monarch…..rich without patrimony…..
charitable without merit.‖ How else would one explain a major ministry in the Govt. of India
manned by senior IAS officers from a single state cadre or less than qualified officers holding
key posts in Union Ministries by patronage than merit? Would the Lokpal look into this critical
issue?
Models of governance are changing fast – Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), services
delivered via NGOs, large-scale direct transfers of funds to the States for infrastructure and
poverty amelioration, tax administration, disinvestment in PSUs, pension funds, et al require
professional competence, domain knowledge and integrity to implement in the best public
interest. Unless appointments to posts of strategic decision-makers are transparent and merit-
based, incest inherent in the present hijacked private limited system would eventually and fully
corrode India‘s social and economic fabric, even as it attempts to feebly portray itself as the
second economic giant of the 21st century. The Jan Lokpal Bill addresses the issue of punishment
but does not redress a major root cause of such unparalleled grand corruption. Should
transparency and participation of doyens of civil society not be insisted upon in the matter of all
senior appointments too? If the top management is competent and prevailed upon by imminent
possibility of strong retribution for corruption, the municipal inspectors, traffic constables and
the like would think twice before harassing a common citizen for pecuniary gain.
Section 2(c)(i) of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), 1988 is an omnibus section
that covers ―any person in the service or pay of the Government or remunerated by the
Government by fees or commission for the performance of any public duty.‖ By implication,
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5. then all constitutional functionaries (including the PM), judges, etc. The ambit of Section 2(c)
includes ―persons falling under any of the above sub-clauses are public servants, whether
appointed by the Government or not.‖ If this is enforced, where is the need to include this in the
terms of the Lokpal? Instead the Lokpal could find place in lieu of Sections 3-5 of the PCA with
an array of special courts reporting to him. Indeed a 3-member Lokpal vested with the powers of
the Supreme Court for the PCA and related Acts and Rules at the head of a state wise PCA Court
vested with the powers of a High Court would create a separate fast track channel of justice and
obviate the decades-long delays inherent in the present system. At least High Courts running at
two-thirds of their sanctioned strength and 3.2 crore pending cases would not be overburdened.
Is this then not a much-needed systemic reform upon which the Lokpal‘s success or failure
would hinge?
Section 6(2) of PCA provides for summary trials in specific cases while Section 6(2)
restricts the right of appeal where the Judge ―passes a sentence of imprisonment not exceeding
one month, and of fine not exceeding two thousand rupees whether or not any order under
section 452 of the said Code is made in addition to such sentence.‖ Shouldn‘t this be increased to
at least five years rigorous imprisonment plus appropriation of all seized assets (beyond the
normal earning capacity of an employee) in cases where an employee is caught red-handed
accepting a bribe or physically found to be in possession of assets beyond his/her known sources
of income? What would the Lokpal do if the PCA did not provide them a stick to beat corrupt
employees with?
Chapter-III of the PCA details the types of illegal gratification and prescribes punishment
for each category, none of which extends beyond five years simple imprisonment plus a fine and
for criminal cases up to seven years. However, the quantum of punishment and fine is left to the
learned PCA judge‘s discretion. Why not adopt US law that makes it mandatory for the judge to
impose fines and punishments quantified in the law? Thus for an employee caught red-handed
accepting a bribe of say, a crore of rupees, the punishment could be three years‘ rigorous
imprisonment, forfeiture of the ill-gotten money by the State and a fine of Rs. 5 lakh. It is
important that the proposed Lokpal Bill does not provide a negotiating counter to the judiciary
against the State. The same punishment would be imposed on the bribe giver, apart from being
blacklisted from all government contracts for a period of five years.
The most fundamental question that comes up relates to Chapter-IV of the PCA that
entrusts investigation under PCA to the CBI. The concept of social audit is yet to take off in this
land. In MNREGA, where it has to some extent, the results are startling. The government
machinery is already overstretched and corrupt. Then where does the government‘s lie in its
objection to permit its subjects to partake in law making and enforcement. One is not talking of
Salwa Judum or any other form of militant vigilantism that we are witnessing in North Africa
and the Middle East. What I am looking at is the right of a perfectly respectable educated citizen
like an IT engineer, a PSU engineer, the neighborhood physician, a voluble housewife and an
interior designer to inspect public works in their residential locality, check quality of potable
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6. water, monitor the performance of gardeners in public parks and sanitation staff on roads or
teachers in government-run schools? Indeed this type of social vigilantism is most desirable
when government is withering and governance vanishing. The institution of the Lokpal is a
punitive one, not one that would look into performance of government departments. Then why
not allow consumer courts to entertain complaints filed by Residents Welfare Organizations for
deficient service and empower these courts to punish and fine the rank and file of government
operatives at the lower level?
The Jan Lokpal Bill holds the Lokpal responsible for questioning delays in public works,
harassment of citizens by public servants, et al. This would seem to render internal audit and
statutory audit by the CAG of India redundant. Instead of overburdening the Lokpal, would it not
be better to pass the Public Audit Bill that has been gathering dust for over a year in Parliament?
Like a three-member Lokpal, why cannot the CAG be treated similarly as a multi-member
institution? Empowering the CAG for search and seizure, recoveries of revenue, filing police
complaints against delinquent public servants and requisitioning the help of state police, release
his reports in public for without waiting for the Ministry to place his reports at their time in
Parliament? The CAG needs to be empowered to create his own establishment independent of
the other civil services, a captive budget, engage experts at salaries determined by him, hire
interns and absorb deserving ones into the Indian Audit and Accounts Service, et al. The Lokpal
does not hold any monopoly of the nation‘s conscience. Collectively, the CAG, CVC, CEC,
courts and many others do.
The existing PCA needs to be repealed and replaced with a new PCA that would include
the Lokpal, CAG, CVC and CBI in its ambit, each with an individual role of its own. At the
same time, ambiguous recruitment rules for senior management posts in the GOI need to be
rewritten providing specific mandatory qualifications for each post and recruit by public
advertisement, keeping 50% posts for civil servants. Similarly, qualifications should be
prescribed for posts of the CAG, Lokpal, CEC, CIC, CCI, etc. and age restrictions on such posts
relaxed to 70 years of age given Census 2011‘s statistics of rising longevity. Civil servants
should also be debarred from any form of employment either under the Govt. and/or under the
Constitution after superannuation/resignation from service, including to posts of CAG, CEC,
CIC, CCI, etc. At the same time, the process of impeachment prescribed for certain constitutional
functionaries should be limited to professional misconduct only. Even then impeachment rules
should provide for impeachment by Parliament by a simple majority of members present and
voting, instead of the present two-thirds. For acts within the purview of the PCA an order of
dismissal by the President of India would suffice. However, I entirely agree with the Jan Lokpal
Bill in abolishing the discredited CVC that has proved to be more of a handmaiden of
convenience for both civil servants and ministers, as the recent case of Mr. PJ Thomas shows.
Anna Hazare‘s ‗victory‘ is a hard-earned one. Public euphoria and active support of the
intelligentsia is what it needs to become reality. It would indeed be this nation‘s greatest
misfortune if such unparalleled public support did not bring accountability of its governors.
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7. Cicero aptly put it, "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive
treason from within….the traitor is the plague.‖ When the plague menaces a nation, the measures
to curb it should be equally, if not more, Draconian for it impinges upon our integrity and
international self-respect, indeed our survival as a nation – the Lokpal is simply not enough.
(2033 words)
The author is a former civil servant who has served as Ambassador of India in Cuba, Chile and
Bolivia. He also served as Director of the erstwhile Historical Research Division in the Ministry
of External Affairs and was a Visiting Fellow at the Research Institute on Communist Affairs at
Columbia University (USA) while Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski was its Director. He has also
represented India in international fora and is an expert on the Sino-Soviet border dispute and
India’s border issues with Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous
and dreadful.
— Samuel Johnson, English writer and lexicographer (1709-1784)
In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if
they don't have the first, the other two will kill you.
— Warren Buffet, American financier (b. 1930)
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers
and divines.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, philosopher and poet (1803-1880)
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844-1900)
”Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the
character of the organization.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches people by
example. If the government becomes the law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law and invites every man
to become a law unto himself.
— Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1856-1941)
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