A high-profile Selection Committee led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “currently seized” with the search for an eminent jurist to aid the appointment of anti-corruption ombudsman, Lokpal, the government informed the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Besides Mr. Modi, the selection committee is composed of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.
Mallikarjun Kharge, in his capacity as the leader of the single largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha, refused to attend a meeting of the committee convened on March 1. He had been called as a “special invitee”.
Though passed in 2014, the Lokpal and Lokayukta Act of 2013 was not implemented all these years because there was no Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the 16th Lok Sabha. The 2013 statute includes the LoP as a member of the selection committee. The Act intends the LoP to be the part of the selection committee of the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of India and the Speaker, which has to first appoint an eminent jurist among their ranks.
However, on April 27 last year, the Supreme Court, in a judgment, clarified that the Lokpal appointment process need not be stalled merely due to the absence of the LoP. The judgment dismissed the government’s reasoning that the Lokpal appointment process should wait till the 2013 Act was amended to replace the LoP with the single largest opposition party leader.
On Tuesday, the government informed a Bench led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi that the appointment process was on full swing. The affidavit said the committee had resolved, in their March 1 meeting, to first fill up the vacancy of an eminent jurist “at the earliest.”
The present hearing before Justice Gogoi’s Bench is based on a contempt petition filed by Common Cause, represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, for not implementing the April 2017 judgment of the Supreme Court.
The Bench posted the case for hearing on April 17.
