The Ombudsman

In one line

An Ombudsman is an independent officer who investigates a citizen's complaint of maladministration against the government, free of cost and without the formality of a court.

In the words a student can write in an exam: the Ombudsman is an institution of Scandinavian origin consisting of an officer appointed by and answerable to the legislature, independent of the executive, who investigates complaints of maladministration by public authorities, has access to official files, conducts his inquiry informally and in private, and reports his findings with recommendations rather than making binding orders. The Indian adaptations are the Lokpal at the Union level and the Lokayukta in the States, recommended by the Administrative Reforms Commission in 1966 and given statutory form by the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act 2013, though the Indian bodies are concerned principally with corruption rather than with maladministration generally.

The word and the original

Ombudsman is a Swedish word meaning a representative or agent, and it is the office of the Justitieombudsman established in Sweden in 1809 that is the ancestor of all the others. The office spread to Finland, Denmark and Norway in the twentieth century, and from there to the common law world: New Zealand in 1962 was the first common law country to adopt it, and the United Kingdom followed with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration in 1967.

What an Ombudsman is for

The gap it fills should be stated first, because it is the whole justification for the office.

A citizen who has been treated badly by a department has, in theory, several remedies. In practice each has a difficulty.

Maladministration is the gap. It covers delay, incompetence, ineptitude, neglect, arbitrariness, rudeness, failure to follow procedure, failure to reply, and bias falling short of anything a court would call illegality. None of that is unlawful in a sense a writ court can address, and all of it is what citizens actually complain of.

The classical characteristics

Seven, and the Indian institutions should be measured against them.

1. Independence of the executive, secured by appointment through a process the executive does not control, a fixed tenure, a salary charged on the Consolidated Fund and removal only by a difficult process.
2. Answerable to the legislature, to which the Ombudsman reports.
3. Jurisdiction over maladministration, not merely illegality.
4. Access on complaint by a citizen, ordinarily free of cost and without a lawyer.
5. Wide powers of investigation, including access to official files.
6. Informal, inquisitorial and private procedure, rather than an adversarial hearing.
7. Recommendation, not adjudication. The Ombudsman reports and recommends; the force of the recommendation lies in publicity and in the report to the legislature.