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| Need for giving powers to toothless SAC | | | For the last several years the State Ac-
countability Commission has failed to
check corruption in Government offices. And not a single case has been filed by the SAC against any bureaucrat or police officer or any official of any Government department.
Over the years an impression had gone round that the SAC has remained headless and some of the members have not been nominated with the result the main aim of the SAC to end or check corrupt practices in Government departments has not been realised. But the new Chairperson of the State Accountability Commission (SAC) Justice (Retd) B A Khan has lifted the lid from the SAC box which makes an interesting reading.
He has claimed that the SAC stands toothless and demanded that the Lokpal Act must be extended to the state to empower the Commission to investigate and prosecute graft cases.
The State Accountability Commission was founded in 2002 with an aim to eliminate corruption from the system but gradually the successive governments eroded its jurisdiction. This has left Justice Khan with no other alternative but to demand that the Lokpal Act be extended to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
What is intriguing is the way the SAC has been made a toothless body when it was founded, it had all the government departments, bureaucracy, universities under its purview but successive state governments eroded its authority and left only the political class within its ambit. Justice Khan knows it better than anybody else that gradual erosion of the authority of SAC has kept only the political class which include the Chief Minister, other ministers and political appointee under its purview. It could only give its recommendation and has no control over the action taken. Equally amazing and intriguing is the way most of the recommendations given by the Commission were gathering dust in the cupboards of the secretariat is the claim of Justice Khan. With the result of erosion in its powers the SAC has not received a single complaint against anybody during the last six months. There should have been no dearth of complainants but they knew it well that they would stand exposed if they approach the SAC with a complaint or two when the SAC had been rendered spineless body.
Justice Khan has held parliamentarians and legislators responsible for framing laws and carrying out amendments as a "routine exercise" without "application of mind", with the result many laws failed to meet their intended objectives. He has alleged that there is a "casual approach" to framing laws as bureaucrats do not hold discussions with the legal fraternity and the concerned minister before taking a bill to the legislature.
The amendments to the J&K SAC Act in 2011 which took bureaucrats out of jurisdiction of the Accountability Commission is one such major amendment which made the SAC completely toothless..Justice Khan has questioned the way the amendment has been adopted.
He has posed a question "How can this amendment be justified when at the stage of enactment of the Act in 2002, it was stated that Accountability Commission would be a watch dog for ensuring accountability, checking nepotism, favourtism, corruption and maladministration involving bureaucrats and public functionaries ?"And the bottom line is that Justice Khan has already exposed the working of the SAC and hence time has come for the legislators to have a relook at the matter and if there was need let the state Legislature adopt new amendments which would ensure that the SAC enjoys powers for acting against bureaucrats and public functionaries failing which the SAC should be closed.
There is a possibility that since SAC is toothless the level of corruption keeps on rising in Jammu and Kashmir. |
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