Column

To,
The Prime Minister of India,
Dear Dr Manmohan Singh

The scale of the alleged corruption in Commonwealth Games is shocking. Unfortunately, the government's reaction to it appears totally inadequate. Before the Games, you and Sonia Gandhi made strong statements that no one will be spared. But the measures taken so far in the name of enquiries and investigations are hardly encouraging.

From all the enquiries set up by you, it appears that so far no one has the mandate and authority of investigating the politicians involved, even though it is widely believed that corruption of this scale would not have been possible without the knowledge and collusion of at least some politicians.

Though you have set up the Shunglu committee, it neither has powers nor jurisdiction to conduct the most basic enquiries. Forget politicians, it does not even have the powers to call for records from an ordinary clerk. Suppose it calls for records from a particular department and that department refuses to comply?

What powers does Shunglu committee have to enforce its directions? Does it have powers to summon officers, politicians or contractors to question them or record their statements? Agencies like the CVC and CAG draw their powers under various laws.
In any investigation, time is of essence. Else precious evidence is lost. By the time the Shunglu committee submits its report, most evidence would have been wiped out.

We have made the police complaint
There are serious allegations of corruption, forgery, cheating, breach of trust and conspiracy in the conduct of Commonwealth Games by various government agencies. These are serious criminal offences under Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act. As per law, criminal cases should have been immediately registered in each of the allegations. However, we sadly note that barring a street lighting case, no FIR has been registered in any other allegation.

Who will do the investigations now?
Having made the police complaint, we come to the larger and more critical issue - who would investigate these complaints? Delhi Police and CBI directly report precisely to the same set of people, some of whom are accused in this complaint or are politically so well connected (or critical to the continuance of UPA government) that it would be foolhardy to believe that CBI or Delhi Police would ever dare to raid them or question them.

Therefore, the need of the hour is to realistically tackle this menace in a manner that has a good chance of succeeding.

Absence of effective anti-corruption agency
A look at all anti-corruption laws and agencies indicate that all of them suffer from internal contradictions.

There is not a single effective anti-corruption agency in our country. In the structure and functioning of each of these agencies, there are critical loopholes so as to make it ineffective.

The proposed Lokpal Bill
Government has announced the setting up of yet another agency, called Lokpal, by December. According to the government's proposal, Lokpal would have jurisdiction over politicians but not bureaucrats, as if politicians and bureaucrats indulge in corruption separately.So, almost every case will need to be investigated by both CVC and Lokpal - CVC will look into the role of bureaucrats and Lokpal will look into the role of politicians. But is this a practical or desirable approach? The obvious question is why can't the same agency investigate both? And the most interesting part is that even the Lokpal is being made an advisory body!

We, therefore, demand the following action from the government immediately:

Take immediate steps to protect the evidence
1. The first thing that any investigating agency would do is to prevent the accused from being able to access critical evidence. Therefore, to begin with, the ministers of all those ministries in Delhi government and central government, which dealt with Commonwealth Games money and are suspect, should be immediately asked to step down.

Create effective machinery to do honest and effective investigations and hand over these cases to them:
2. A Special Investigative Team (SIT) headed by a police officer of proven integrity should be constituted and should be given complete powers and independence to do honest investigations into the allegations of corruption in Commonwealth Games.

Use public outcry against corruption to establish effective anti-corruption systems in India
An Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) should be set up through a law which has the powers and resources to investigate complaints of corruption and prosecute the guilty. What should be the ingredients of such a body? A meeting of eminent people took place in August 2010.

It was attended by some very senior people who have been connected with administering anti-corruption systems in our country like Justice Santosh Hegde (Lokayukta of Karnataka), P Shankar (former CVC), Pratyush Sinha (former CVC) and JM Lyngdoh (former Chief Election Commissioner). The meeting discussed the deficiencies in our present anti-corruption set up and what needs to be done. They all concurred that all the anti-corruption agencies should be merged into one agency, say Independent Commission Against Corruption (could be called Lokpal)

(Excerpts from an open letter sent to prime minister Manmohan Singh by Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi, Mallika Sarabhai, Swami Agnivesh, Baba Ramdev, Justice Tewatia, Arvind Kejriwal)