By Team Clarion
PUSHED TO THE MARGIN
* 50 Upa Lok Ayuktas include two Muslims
* No Lok Ayukta in Jammu and Kashmir and Puducherry
* Muslim Lok Ayuktas in Bihar, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi
* Except Kerala, no other state had Muslims as Upa Lok Ayuktas
INDIA has seen two Lokpals and 14 members since March 2019, with no representation of the Muslim community on board. Its first tenure saw eight members and six at present, according to a new book by Mohammed Abdul Mannan, At the Bottom of the Ladder: State of the Indian Muslims –https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0GF1Q9R25 – which quantifies Muslim presence in 150 key organisations, including Union ministries, departments, and other organisations.
The Lokpal and Lok Ayuktas Bill, passed by the Parliament in mid-December 2013, received the President’s assent on the first day of January 2014, a time when the world’s largest democracy was preparing for its 16th general elections in nine phases with 834 million registered voters – the largest-ever polls in the world.
The act was amended in 2016 after its notification. It was only in the March-end 2019 that the country got its first Lokpal, who completed his tenure in May 2022. It had eight members in its first tenure without a Muslim, and again it had no representation of the largest minority community for the second time when six members were appointed in March 2024.
Members of the first tenure completed their three-year tenures beginning March 2019, except for one member who expired a year later. No Muslim is among its 11 officials, including the Secretary, at its office in New Delhi.
Lokpal is the first institution of its kind in independent India, set up to inquire and investigate allegations of corruption against public functionaries falling within the scope and ambit of this Act. The Lokpal is committed to address concerns and aspirations of the citizens of India for clean governance, and has to ensure all efforts within its jurisdiction to serve the public interest to eradicate corruption in public life. India is a signatory to the UN Convention against Corruption.
Corruption in public offices was one of the issues that brought the BJP, led by Narendra Modi, to power in 2014. Lokpal was to be a public ombudsman. The BJP-led NDA government reluctantly set it up only five years later, after a Supreme Court order. In 2021, it received no more than 30 complaints, with critical posts of inquiry and prosecution chiefs vacant, a third of its budget unused and a former member informing that no efforts were being made to make the Lokpal effective.
This story was originally published in clarionindia.net. Read the full story here.