Toothless anti-corruption Commission waits eagerly for complaints

When the going gets corrupt, the corrupt gets going.

And so they had in Goa, pretty badly. So much so that the authorities, in January, had setup a commission to probe bribe charges exclusively against the state's political high-and-mighties.

Now, six-months on, the said commission is keeping its fingers tightly crossed -- for at least one solid charge which it can investigate!

Fact is, the Commission has had just two complainants approaching it since its inception, both of whom turned out to be damp squibs -- the first, in fact, (with charges against former chief minister Ravi Naik) was so damp that he was fined Rs 5,000!

"Rather than giving facts, the complainant admitted before us that Naik was not involved!" says Commission Chairman Justice Gustav Philip Couto who blames him for ruining the case, "We can nab corrupt publicmen, if complaints are backed with evidence."

The Commission's failure to produce results till now, meanwhile, has sent the wrong signals to Goa's reformers. Thus, Damodar Ghanekar, a freelance journalist who had filed a public interest litigation against Irrigation Minister Dayanand Narvekar for his alleged involvement in a multi-crore scam, was unwilling to go before it despite the high court's repeated requests.

"Why should I experiment with a commission which has no punitive powers?" he demands, "At the most, it can hold a person guilty and refer the matter to the government for further action. Isn't it naive to expect any action from the chief minister against his cabinet colleague in today's political set-up?"

Justice Couto, for his part, though admitting his commission has less penal powers than the courts, denies that it is purely a recommendatory body.

"Any public man has to step down once the Commission holds him guilty," he says, "We will also initiate criminal proceedings against such -- and the government cannot deny us sanction for it."

A major hurdle in reining in the public menace, Justice Couto continues, is the much-too-plentiful imperfections in the Corruption (Investigations and Inquiries) Act. Amendments plugging these loopholes are now hanging fire with the government. These include giving the Commission more teeth and also constituting a competent authority to monitor the filing of public personalities' tax returns.

"While copying the Kerala Act verbatim (to set up the Commission), the government deliberately avoided to create such an authority," legal experts allege, "In its absence, the whole exercise is proving futile."