With the Legislative Assembly Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa referring the motion seeking removal of Loakyukta Y. Bhaskar Rao to the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court on Thursday, the fate of over 12,000 complaints pending before the anti-corruption watchdog remain uncertain. While Upalokayukta Subash B. Adi can continue to look into the cases, what complicates the situation is that the Congress MLAs have moved a motion seeking his removal as well in the Legislative Assembly. Legal experts say that according to the recently-amended Karnataka Lokayukta Act, 1984, once such a motion has been referred to the Chief Justice it would preclude the Lokayukta or Upalokayukta from discharging cases or taking decisions.
For instance, the enormous Arkavathi Layout denotification cases, which were brought to the notice of the Lokayukta earlier this year through a complaint by Ramamurthy Gowda, has now come to a halt. Mr. Gowda claimed to have submitted over 3,320 files during the inquiry by the Lokayukta. Similarly stuck are the cases raised by him over the renewal of eight mines by the State government. “There are four of my cases pending. No one is hearing it now,” he says.
A few months before the controversy erupted, M.N. Vijayakumar, a former IAS officer, wrote to the Lokayukta over allegations of a senior bureaucrat involved in misusing official powers and getting a car as bribe. “Mr. Rao had asked for details and relevant documents. These were submitted, and after that, there is no information on these complaints,” he said.
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However, with the motion against the Upalokayukta picking up steam, complainants with Mr. Adi have started to feel jittery.
For the past four years, D.A. Chitra from Jayanagar has seen the Kafkaesque labyrinths of the bureaucracy just to get an “error” in her land records changed. After years of frustrating visits to the district offices, revenue courts and even the Revenue Minister’s office, she saw the Lokayukta complaint as the “last resort”. “It has been a month since my complaint. Now, with all this uncertainty, I really have nowhere else to go,” she said. Similarly, petitions have popped up on change.org against the removal of the Upalokayukta, while representatives of five citizen’s groups have written a letter to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah against the motion as Mr. Adi had played an “important” role in the hearings for the protection of lakes.