Dehradun: Uttarakhand high court has rescheduled the hearing on the state govt’s affidavit regarding the appointment of a Lokayukta after a search committee meeting slated for April 3 could not be held due to a lack of quorum. A division bench of Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta and Justice Subhash Upadhyay has listed the matter for hearing four weeks later.
The state continues to remain without a functioning Lokayukta more than a decade after the Uttarakhand Lokayukta Act was enacted in 2014, and five years since a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed demanding its implementation. During a hearing on April 1, the state govt had requested six months to make the appointment, to which the court granted it three months, noting that a similar request had been made nearly a year ago with no progress.
Uttarakhand was the first state to pass a strong Lokayukta Bill under the then chief minister BC Khanduri, coinciding with the central Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act of 2014, which required states to appoint their own Lokayuktas within a year. However, the post has remained vacant.
The PIL, filed in 2021 by Ravi Shankar Joshi, highlighted the absence of an independent anti-corruption mechanism in the state. The petition argued that while states such as Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka have active Lokayuktas, Uttarakhand had none, forcing even minor matters to be brought before the high court. The PIL stated that the state govt failed to appoint a Lokayukta, even as an annual expenditure of Rs 2-3 crore continued to be incurred in the name of the institution.
The petitioner submitted that all investigative agencies in the state functioned under the direct control of the govt, with complete authority resting with the state’s political leadership. It said there was no investigative agency in Uttarakhand empowered to register a corruption case against any gazetted officer without prior govt permission. The vigilance department, often described as the guarantor of independent and impartial investigations, was a wing of the state police and remained under the complete control of the police headquarters, the vigilance directorate or the chief minister’s office.The petitioner added that a fully transparent, independent and impartial investigative framework was of paramount importance to the citizens of the state and that the vacant post of the Lokayukta should be filled without delay.
