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Corruption watchdog; bark worse than bite
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MANASI PHADKE
BRENTON CORDIERO
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BANGALORE: It’s a banner day at the Karnataka Lokayukta office.
The counters on the ground floor are brimming with people registering complaints against corrupt government officials. Upstairs, hearing officers are busy conducting trials of public employees accused of taking bribes. Meanwhile in his office, the boss—Santosh Hegde—is
holding a press conference about his most recent raid. Reporters jot notes and shoot questions under the glare of the camcorders.
Hegde, who heads Karnataka’s anti-corruption agency, will be in the headlines again. In the last hundred days, he has conducted around ten press conferences. He's announced 18 raids on private homes. And he’s set traps for 105 officials, including Y Sampangi, the first MLA
allegedly caught in the act of pocketing backsheesh.
Inaction
What Hegde routinely fails to say is what happens to the accused when the media go away. In fact, statistics indicate that the chance any errant official will be punished is a long shot, at best.
An IIJNM investigation, which reviewed of 150 cases and numerous interviews, shows a Lokayukta office so hamstrung by employee shortages, arcane rules and its own failing that it often takes years to go from press conference to internal trial.
Complainants and witnesses turn hostile. And in the cases where Hegde's forces are able to prove a charge of corruption, they fail to follow up on recommendations for punishments that often go years without a response from the government.
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> After the crackdown, comes complacency |
Arguable impact
The result: Less than one per cent of the public’s complaints or the Lokayukta’s traps ever result in verified punishment, the study indicates.
Hegde’s press conferences may have a deterrent effect on corruption, but the IIJNM study was unable to measure it.
Even non-governmental organizations and activists fighting corruption in the state say they are in the dark about his results.
"As far as acting on public complaints is concerned, the Lokayukta has done a reasonably good job," said Gopakumar K Thampi, Director of the Bangalore-based Public Affairs Centre.
"But compared to the publicity of the raids, there isn't much information on the follow up."
Hegde said the performance of his office shouldn't be judged "in the form of statistics," but by the public impact it has made with its successful cases. Apart from the investigations that go through his office, he has filed about 200 cases directly to the criminal courts.
"I have been saying that we get about 25 % convictions in the court and we get much more for misconduct by officials,” said Hegde, a retired Supreme Court judge who became the Lokayukta in 2006. “And some of them are removed from service.”
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