Raje government ties itself in knots over ordinance

If neither the court nor the police can investigate corruption charges till sanctioned by the state government, which can take up to six months to give its approval, who in the government will investigate into the charges ? And on what basis will the government decide to give sanctions?

This is one of the several questions begging for an answer even as Rajasthan government laid the controversial ordinance in the Assembly on Monday for the approval of the House even as a petition was filed in the Rajasthan High Court by one Bhagwat Gour praying for the court to quash the ordinance as ultra vires.

The ordinance promulgated on September 7 last month restrained courts and the police to investigate charges or prosecute public servants till they received sanction from the state government. Unlike a similar ordinance promulgated in Maharashtra earlier this year which allowed the government three months to give sanction, in Rajasthan the ordinance allows the government 180 days or six months to sit over complaints against public servants.

The state government on Monday defended the ordinance, which it claimed was designed to protect honest public servants. It claimed that 73 per cent of the complaints against public servants filed in courts were found to be false after investigation.

Curiously the statement issued by the state government also acknowledged that during the last three and a half years 1,158 cases against public servants had been lodged by its own Anti-Corruption Branch. It also admits that as many as 818 cases were ‘trap cases’ in which public servants were caught red handed taking bribes. At least 51 of those cases were related to Disproportionate Assets (DA) while 289 cases involved misuse of public office—an admission that the state is indeed grappling with serious corruption in the bureaucracy.

In a front page editorial in Rajasthan Patrika, the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief Gulab Kothari wondered why the state government could not wait to move the amendments in the Assembly on Monday rather than promulgate an ordinance merely a month and a half before the assembly session. What was the hurry, the editorial pointedly asked.

Can the state government tell the law courts how it should proceed to deal with complaints against public servants, the editorial asked.

Under section 156(3) of the CrPC a magistrate can ask the police to register and FIR against a public servant or first investigate into the charges levelled against a public servant. The Supreme Court had held that lodging an FIR would be mandatory for the police if a complaint is referred to it by the court. But the ordinance is aimed at stopping both these processes.

What’s more, the ordinance seeks to gag the media and prevent it from reporting the charges or disclosing the identity of public servants till the state government gives its sanction. The argument offered by the state government is that such disclosure in the media even before the public servant is found to be guilty, tends to malign and humiliate the public servant and his/her family members.

It is a strange argument in a country where agencies like the police and the CBI routinely disclose the identity of people they are investigating and every other detail regarding the case even before completing the investigation. Public servants need immunity but not the ordinary citizen?