ACAUT Nagaland has out rightly rejected the state government’s draft on “Nagaland Lokayukta Bill, 2015” saying “the bill was just an attempt to hoodwink the Naga public.”
ACAUT Nagaland through its chairman Joel Naga and member, Mar Longkumer, in a letter to the chairman of the Standing Committee on Lokayukta, made its stand clear that ACAUT would not accept the bill in its present form under any circumstances
ACAUT said almost 1/3rd bill, signed by chief minister T.R. Zeliang on July 18, 2015, was unacceptable, saying it ran contrary to the meeting held on September 26 with the standing Committee on Lokayukta.
ACAUT said that the government had presented the proposed bill in a rushed manner without giving ample time to ACAUT members to study the bill before it is presented.
Terming the draft ‘Nagaland Lokayukta Bill, 2015’ as “useless”, ACAUT said section 8, section 14 (4) (b), section 16, section 20, section 25 (2, 3, 4 & 5) and section 30 of the bill was totally unacceptable.
With regard to section 9, ACAUT stated the particularly section was deemed to infringe upon the effectiveness of Nagaland Lokayukta and at the same time demanded that the insertion of ‘Second Schedule’ (in section 9) was completely unnecessary and needed to be deleted as a whole.
Even after raising important points during the recent meeting, ACAUT said it was utterly surprised to note that the word “suo motu”, which was crucial for the effectiveness of the Lokayukta, was nowhere mentioned in the draft, particularly in Section 11 (1).
ACAUT further pointed out that there was no investigation wing and prosecution wing in the Nagaland Lokayukta Bill, 2015.
While stating that section 26 needed to be “fundamentally rephrased”, ACAUT said the requirement of prior sanction from the competent authority to go ahead without prosecution cannot be blanket.
It reminded the committee that Section 197 of the CrPC and Section 19 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 accord safeguards to help public servants discharge duties honestly and not to shield the guilty. “If prior sanction of the government was required to prosecute guilty public servants, the Lokayukta Bill would become another toothless tiger,” ACAUT stated.
In this regard, ACAUT has asked the chairman of the Standing Committee to accept the recommendation put up by them– ‘draft Lokayukta Bill, 2017’– having all salient features necessary for an effective Lokayukta.
Unless the committee was willing to draft a new bill titled ‘Nagaland Lokayukta Bill, 2017’ by reintroducing it in the special session of the NLA, with crucial inputs from ACAUT or adopt its draft proposal, ACAUT make it known that there can be no meeting ground.
“We cannot partake in an exercise where the people of Nagaland are to be taken for a ride by setting up Lokayukta which will be just in name,” ACAUT said.
Therefore, ACAUT said that if their proposal was acceptable, the chairman of the committee could call them for another “but last round of consultative meeting immediately.”