Amendments made to the Lokayukta Act in 2021 were made to strengthen the institution not to weaken it.
The issue of the Lokayukta was front and centre in the Assembly today, with the house rejecting a VPP resolution to strengthen the institution.
Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma, in his reply to the resolution, told the Assembly that the amendment of the Meghalaya Lokayukta Act 2014 that was passed in 2021 amended Section 3 by replacing the word “and” with “or” in clause (a) of sub-section 2 to make the ombudsman body functional.
The Chief Minister said that the amendment in 2021 was carried out so as to fill the lacuna in the Meghalaya Lokayukta Act 2014 as the definition of Lokayukta as provided in Section 3 (2) stated that the Lokayukta can function and discharge the duties only when it consists of a Chairperson and four members.
These amendments were needed then as there was a challenge to the decisions passed by the earlier Chairman, Justice PK Musahary in the High Court of Meghalaya. At that time only the Chairman of the Lokayukta had been appointed, Sangma said.
He added that when the state government examined Lokayukta Act of other states, it found that Sikkim, Haryana, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Tripura, etc. have single member Lokayuktas. This led to the 2021 amendment in Meghalaya to make the Lokayukta a single member body also.
Earlier, initiating a discussion on the resolution, Shillong North MLA Adelbert Nongrum of the VPP said that the amendment to the Lokayukta Act in 2021 diluted the effective functioning of Lokayukta.
“By allowing the option of a single member body of just the Chairperson alone, and without the mandatory appointment of Judicial Member(s) in what is a statutorily a judicial body, the Amendment Act of 2021 has practically weakened the role of the Lokayukta in the state,” the VPP MLA said.
