Lokayuktas' report card: Only seven of the 29 release their annual reports

There is no official website for the Lokayuktas of 10 states, including Delhi

Last month, the Supreme Court stayed a Lokayukta police investigation against former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa. The Lokayukta police had filed a first information report (FIR) against Yediyurappa on charges of bribery.

Though the pendency of cases in the Karnataka Lokayukta has decreased from the high of 18,299 recorded in 2008, the overall pendency has increased by 773.4 per cent in 2020 from 780 in 2005. The disposal of cases has increased by 14 per cent in the same five-year period. 

India has a Lokayukta in 29 states. However, only seven of these states have made their annual reports accessible to the public. Even the Lokpal, which was established in 2014, has released its annual reports for only two years: 2019 and 2020. 

Set up as anti-corruption watchdogs, Lokayuktas are mandated by their respective state Lokayukta Act to present a consolidated annual report on their performance to their state governor. Ten states, in fact, are yet to set up an official website for their Lokayuktas. Among these ten is Delhi, where the Lokayukta Act was passed in 1995.

"An independent and efficacious anti-corruption forum is always disliked or feared by those in power. The Lokpal or the Lokayuktas also could not set right the executive apathy since they practically depended upon the executive. They had neither the purse nor the sword," said Supreme Court advocate Kaleeswaram Raj. 

A Business Standard analysis of the annual reports available for the Lokayuktas of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Haryana found that despite an increase in the disposal of cases, pendency has continued to rise in all the four ombudsmen. For instance, the sharpest increase in pendency was seen in the Lokayukta of Haryana. From 73 cases in 2006, the pendency has increased to 1,264 cases in 2020. In Madhya Pradesh, the pendency increased by 227 per cent – from 107 cases in 2006 to 350 in 2017. 

Raj said that the Lokayuktas will be more efficient if they are made free from political wrangling and if the appointments are “merit-oriented”. "In my view, the Supreme Court and the respective high courts should take the present situation seriously and oversee the functioning of these institutions, by adopting the device of ‘continuing mandamus’." 

Continuing mandamus is a series of directions by a court of law over a sustained period of time instructing an authority to fulfil its duty in the public interest.