LEADER of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj has thoroughly exposed UPA Government’s lies and half-truths in defending its untenable decision to appoint a charge-sheeted IAS officer P J Thomas as Chief Vigilance Commissioner (CVC). She took a principled stand in the high-powered committee that a person who was an accused in a criminal case didn’t deserve to be appointed as country’s highest watchdog against corruption. She was over-ruled by remaining two members of the committee, namely Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P Chidambaram. Home Minister ignored Swaraj’s plea and asserted that Thomas had been “exonerated” in the Pamolein Import scam while the Prime Minister rejected her suggestion to postpone the decision even for a day to verify facts.
Swaraj’s proposal that any of the remaining two members short-listed by the Government may be appointed to the country’s highest institutional authority to probe corruption was also ignored. No effort was made to select a candidate on the basis of consensus. PM and HM insisted that Thomas and Thomas alone should be the new CVC. Leader of the Opposition recorded her dissent. The principal opposition party boycotted the CVC’s swearing in ceremony blaming the Congress-led Government of appointing a tainted person to the high office and flouting the established procedure for appointment of CVC.
The Supreme Court of India was brought into the picture by a PIL seeking quashing of the appointment of Thomas on the premise that he was not fit to be appointed and that the procedure adopted for his appointment was bad in law. It is a measure of the Government’s stubbornness that it told the apex court that testing the suitability of CVC was the sole prerogative of the executive and outside the purview of the judiciary. The affidavit filed by the Attorney General G E Vahanvati said there was no specific requirement of unanimity of the selection committee and that majority opinion would prevail in accordance with the democratic principle. Making light of the consensus plea the AG said one person couldn’t be allowed to stall the appointment of CVC. This facile argument convinces no one as it would defeat the very purpose of inducting the Leader of the Opposition in the selection committee. A bi-party consensus was obviously the intended course of action so far as the law adopted by Parliament in 2003 during NDA regime was concerned. The majority’s refusal to consider any of the remaining two short-listed officers for the high job is a clear indication that the decision to appoint Thomas was pre-meditated and the meeting of the selection committee was just a formality.
The Congress-led Government made itself a laughing stock by repeatedly changing track in response to searching questions raised by the apex court. It first challenged the court’s jurisdiction to go into the suitability of the person concerned and later insisted that “impeccable integrity” couldn’t be the sole criteria. At another point of time Vahanvati argued that the Kerala Government had given a “clean chit” to Thomas in the palmolein deal case. This later turned out to be a half-truth. As luck would have it, another bench of the apex court meanwhile declared as closed an appeal pending in the court in the light of the death of former Chief Minister Karunakaran who was the main accused in the case. The decks were thus cleared for the prosecution of Thomas. The bench made a telling observation to the effect that even if Thomas was presumed to have “impeccable integrity”, the charge-sheet against him in the palmolein case would pose difficulties for him to function as CVC. Any person, the bench observed, against whom CVC may be conducting an enquiry may raise a finger to say, “You yourself are an accused, how can you look into another complaint”. The apex court bombarded the Attorney General with several inconvenient questions about the short-listing of panel for the consideration of the selection committee, Thomas’ lack of any experience in investigation or vigilance work and exclusion of other eligible candidates in the panel. The Chief Justice of India’s query whether CVC should be a person of outstanding ability as well as impeccable integrity brought forth the following astounding response from the Attorney General, “The criteria of experience and knowledge cannot be sacrificed at the altar of integrity”. Is the Government of the considered opinion that integrity of an officer is not of utmost importance? Is it one of the causes of massive corruption during the Congress-led alliance’s rule during the past seven years?
Government’s attempt to persuade Thomas to quit to prevent further embarrassment for the Prime Minister and his Government didn’t have any impression on the CVC. He appears to be confident about the support of powerful people. Obviously under tremendous public pressure because of the bad publicity he got during the last two months, the CVC dragged the Government deeper into trouble by revealing that all the nine IAS officers who were empanelled with the Central Government for appointment as Secretary in 2008 were charge-sheeted or had complaints against them. He mentioned this in an affidavit he filed in the court to argue that his was not a “unique” case of a charge-sheeted officer being appointed to high office. He further asserted that by virtue of the process of their selection, all secretaries to the Government of India were deemed to be of “impeccable integrity”. He told the court that the enquiry into whether or not all the documents about him were made available to the selection committee was not at all relevant. Interestingly, the Government changed its stand on the issue at least twice. At one point of time, the Attorney General said the Prime Minister was not informed about CVC’s involvement in the palmolein case. When challenged by Sushma Swaraj, the Government changed stand. The Home Minister publicly admitted that the Leader of the Opposition had brought the case to the notice of the committee. Swaraj’s response to the Home Minister’s admission was sober and dignified. She had made public the entire proceedings and the Home Minister had admitted that she did bring to the notice of the Prime Minister and Home Minister that Thomas had not been acquitted in the case in which he was charge-sheeted. Since there was no longer any dispute over facts, she decided not to file an affadavit in the court.
The judicial process would take its own course and time. What is gratifying is that the Supreme Court refused to be misled by the Government’s false and untenable contentions and did raise relevant questions to bring out the truth. Although the Government is in the dock for several major scams, the appointment of CVC is perhaps the only one in which Dr Manmohan Singh is in the line of fire. He needs to take the country into confidence as to whether or not he was in the knowledge of Thomas’ involvement in the pamolein scam and as to why the fact about his charge-sheet was not mentioned in his bio-data? The Prime Minister will do well to tell the nation whether or not he was under instructions to appoint Thomas and no one else as CVC? If the answer is yes, will he please disclose the identity of the person who instructed him?
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