Arun Jaitley’s Budget vow to fight graft a bluff?

Hyderabad: Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley toed his boss and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s line assiduously when he reiterated many a time in the Union Budget 2017-18 speech the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) commitment to fight corruption and eliminate black money from the system. He was also eloquent about how the recent demonetisation exercise that put the country of a billion people on cash tenterhooks for nearly two months was primarily aimed at crushing the corrupt and flushing out illegally-accumulated wealth.

But his grandiose anti-graft announcements and utterances in the Budget speech appear mere rhetorical going by the meagre allocations the Finance Minister has made for the Central government agencies that play critical role in curbing corruption and stemming the generation of ill-gotten wealth: Lokpal, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).

“Our agenda for the next year is: ‘Transform, Energise and Clean India’, that is, TEC India. This agenda of TEC India seeks to (among other things) clean the country from the evils of corruption, black money and non-transparent political funding,” Arun Jaitley said in his Budget speech delivered in Parliament on Wednesday last week.

Cleaning India of corruption was major thrust of his 37-page, 184-paragraph speech, but the Finance Minister did not show similar level of interest while allocating funds to the government bodies and institutions that would play critical role in curbing the graft. For instance, Lokpal was allocated an amount of Rs 4.29 crore in the Budget 2017-18, which is exactly half of Rs 8.58 crore the anti-corruption body was granted in the current financial year. However, the allocation in 2016-17 was subsequently revised to zero as the government failed to establish Lokpal.

Erstwhile Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government enacted Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 after a prolonged, nationwide agitation led by anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare. The Act mandates establishment of Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas in the states to inquire into allegations of corruption against public functionaries.

Incidentally, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which leads the current NDA dispensation at the Centre also supported the agitation. But the BJP-led govt doesn’t seem to be keen on setting up Lokpal to curb corruption. The CBI, the country's premier investigating agency that handles corrupt cases against public servants, private individuals and firms among others, has also failed to get decent increase in budgetary allocation.

The agency was given Rs 695.62 crore for 2017-18, a marginal upswing of 8.31 per cent from the last financial year’s revised allocation. The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) is not as lucky as the CBI even. The corruption watchdog received an outlay of Rs 27.68 crore for the upcoming financial year. Surprisingly, the amount was same as that of last financial year.

With meagre or no additional budgetary support for these key institutions in the recent Budget, how the Modi government is going to fight corruption is anybody’s guess. According to the available data, over 2,555 CBI cases have been pending for trial for over a decade. As of October 31, 2016, the total number of cases pending for trial and under investigation is 2,197 and 9,347 respectively.

The inordinate delays in investigation and trial of CBI cases are obviously due to shortage of staff. It could be worth mentioning here that the Hyderabad branch of the CBI reportedly cited shortage of staff as the reason for not immediately starting preliminary investigations into many corruption cases. As of April 2016, as many as 1,530 posts were vacant in the CBI against its sanctioned strength of over 7,200.

The CBI is not alone here. CVC Commissioner KV Chowdary recently blamed shortage of staff for delay in completing cases on time. According to him, as many as 5,000 criminal cases under various sections of the IPC and Prevention of Corruption Act are pending across the country. Of them, around 3,000 have been pending for the past five years. The agency receives nearly 80,000 cases a year.

Of them, 2,000 to 3,000 are actionable cases. As per CVC’s 2015 annual report, the corruption watchdog has a total staff of 257 against the sanctioned strength of 296, leading to a shortfall of 13.17 per cent. The staff crunch is much higher in higher levels with as many as 26 per cent Group-A posts vacant.

“Cut in funding for institutions Lokpal is objectionable. That shows the central government is not serious about controlling corruption. There is widespread corruption in high places. In order to curb it, the central government should strengthen the hands of the CVC, CBI and Lokpal by allocating more funds for them,” M Padmanabha Reddy, secretary, Forum for Good Governance, told The Hans India.

Stating that the government should immediately set up Lokpal, he suggested that like the judiciary, the anti-graft bodies of the government should be allowed to draw funds from the consolidated fund of India so that they could function without any political interference.

By P Madhusudhan Reddy