India Before the Lokpal: the Santhanam Committee
Chapter Six
Syllabus topic 1, "Ombudsman"
Pages 23 to 26 of 1033
In one line
Before there was any talk of a Lokpal, India appointed a committee under K. Santhanam to find out why corruption was growing, and its report of 1964 produced the Central Vigilance Commission.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Committee on Prevention of Corruption, appointed by the Government of India in June 1962 under the chairmanship of K. Santhanam and reporting in March 1964, examined the causes and extent of corruption in the public services and recommended, among much else, the constitution of a Central Vigilance Commission as an apex body for vigilance administration in the Union; the Commission was set up by a Government of India resolution of 11 February 1964 and functioned without a statute for thirty-nine years.
Why a committee, and why then
Independent India had built a large State quickly. Licensing, permits, quotas, controls on foreign exchange and on capacity, public sector undertakings and a vast programme of public works all put discretion in the hands of officials, and discretion is where corruption grows.
By the late 1950s the political temperature had risen. The Mundhra affair of 1957 and 1958, in which the Life Insurance Corporation had bought shares in companies controlled by a Calcutta industrialist, led to an inquiry by Justice M.C. Chagla and to the resignation of the Finance Minister. That inquiry was itself an early example of the technique Module I's second label is about.
The Government appointed the Committee on Prevention of Corruption in June 1962. K. Santhanam was a member of the Constituent Assembly and a former Minister, and the Committee had five members. It reported on 31 March 1964.
What the Committee found
That corruption was widespread and that its causes were structural. The Committee identified the scope for delay, the complexity of rules, the width of discretion, the absence of supervision, low salaries in some grades and, above all, the absence of a real risk of detection.
That the machinery was scattered. The Administrative Vigilance Division of the Home Ministry, the Delhi Special Police Establishment, and the vigilance units of individual Ministries all did parts of the work, and nobody coordinated them or held them to a standard.
That the sanction procedure protected the guilty. The requirement of previous sanction to prosecute a public servant, then in section 6 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1947, was being used to delay and to refuse, a complaint that has never gone away and which chapter 740 takes up under the present Act.
That the higher services and the political level were not being reached at all. This finding is the one that matters for label 1, because it is what made an ombudsman-type institution seem necessary in addition to a vigilance body.
India Before the Lokpal: the Santhanam Committee
What the Committee recommended
The report is long and its recommendations run to hundreds. Four matter here.
A Central Vigilance Commission. An apex body, headed by a Central Vigilance Commissioner of the status of a Chairman of the Union Public Service Commission, to exercise general check and superintendence over vigilance and anti-corruption work in the Ministries and in public sector undertakings, to advise on disciplinary cases, and to have its own machinery for inquiry.
A Chief Vigilance Officer in every Ministry and Department, to be the Commission's arm inside the organisation. Chapter 690 explains how that arrangement works and why the officer's dual loyalty is its weak joint.
Reform of the sanction and disciplinary procedure, to cut the delay between detection and consequence.
A code of conduct and a system of property returns for public servants, the ancestor of section 44 of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act 2013.
What the Government did
The Central Vigilance Commission was constituted by a Government of India resolution dated 11 February 1964, and Nittoor Srinivasa Rau, a retired Chief Justice of the Mysore High Court, was appointed the first Central Vigilance Commissioner.
The word to notice in that sentence is resolution. Not an Act of Parliament. An executive order of the Government, creating a body to supervise the vigilance work of that same Government.
Apply the checklist from chapter 50 and the consequence is immediate. Attribute one, creation by law, fails. Attribute two, appointment by or on the advice of the legislature, fails. Attribute three, security of tenure and salary by law, fails. The Commission that India created in 1964 was a useful body and was not an ombudsman, and it remained in that position until the Act of 2003.
That is the answer to a favourite examination question, and chapter 310 states it as an argument.
Why the Santhanam Committee did not recommend an ombudsman
It is a fair question and the answer is instructive. The Committee's terms of reference were about corruption in the services. It was looking at officials, at the machinery for catching them, and at the procedure for punishing them.
An ombudsman is a different instrument aimed at a different problem: the citizen's grievance against the administration, and the accountability of Ministers rather than of clerks. That problem was picked up two years later by a body with a much wider mandate, the Administrative Reforms Commission, and chapter 70 takes the story there.
The sequence is worth stating plainly in an answer, because students frequently merge the two. Santhanam 1964 gives India its vigilance machinery. The Administrative Reforms Commission 1966 gives India the Lokpal idea. Two committees, two years apart, two different institutions, and India got the first almost immediately and the second forty-nine years later.
India Before the Lokpal: the Santhanam Committee
A worked example
A Deputy Secretary in a Ministry is suspected in 1966 of taking money to move a file.
Who can act. The Ministry's own vigilance unit, under its Chief Vigilance Officer. If the case looks criminal, the Delhi Special Police Establishment. The Central Vigilance Commission advises on whether a departmental inquiry should be held and on the punishment.
What happens in practice. The Commission gives advice. The Ministry is not bound by it. If the Ministry disagrees it records its reasons, and the disagreement appears in the Commission's annual report.
Where the machinery stops. If the suspicion is against the Minister rather than the Deputy Secretary, none of this reaches him. The Commission's jurisdiction is over public servants of the Union. A Minister is not a public servant in that sense, and the Delhi Special Police Establishment needs sanction to prosecute.
And that gap is the whole point. The vigilance machinery of 1964 reaches the administration. It does not reach the political executive. The demand for a Lokpal is a demand for an institution that does, and every one of the eight failed Bills was resisted at exactly that point.
What this chapter does NOT say
It does not say the Santhanam Committee was a failure. It produced a working institution within a year of reporting, which is more than the Lokpal proposal managed in five decades.
It does not say the Central Vigilance Commission was powerless before 2003. It was influential, its advice was usually followed, and its annual reports were read. The point is narrower and legal: a body created by resolution can be altered or wound up by resolution, and that is a difference in kind and not in degree.
And it does not say the two lines never met. They met in 1997, when the Supreme Court directed that the Commission be given statutory status, and that direction is what produced the Act of 2003. Chapter 580 works that case in full.
Quick revision
Committee on Prevention of Corruption, appointed June 1962, chairman K. Santhanam, reported 31 March 1964.
Findings: structural causes, scattered machinery, a sanction procedure that protected the guilty, and no reach into the higher services or the political level.
Recommendations: a Central Vigilance Commission; a Chief Vigilance Officer in every Ministry; reform of sanction and discipline; a code of conduct and property returns.
The Commission was created by a Government of India resolution of 11 February 1964, not by an Act, and Nittoor Srinivasa Rau was the first Central Vigilance Commissioner.
Apply the checklist: created by resolution, appointed by the Government, no statutory tenure. Not an ombudsman.
India Before the Lokpal: the Santhanam Committee
The sequence: Santhanam 1964 gives the vigilance machinery; the Administrative Reforms Commission 1966 gives the Lokpal idea.
Test yourself
1. What was the Santhanam Committee and what was its most important institutional recommendation? The Committee on Prevention of Corruption, appointed in June 1962 under K. Santhanam and reporting in March 1964. Its most important institutional recommendation was the constitution of a Central Vigilance Commission as an apex body to exercise general check and superintendence over vigilance and anti-corruption work in the Union, supported by a Chief Vigilance Officer in each Ministry.
2. How was the Central Vigilance Commission created, and why does the manner of creation matter? By a Government of India resolution dated 11 February 1964, that is by an executive order and not by legislation. It matters because a body created by resolution can be altered, weakened or abolished by resolution of the same Government it supervises, so it fails the first three attributes of an ombudsman: creation by law, appointment on the advice of the legislature, and statutory security of tenure and salary.
3. Why did the Santhanam Committee not recommend an ombudsman? Because its terms of reference were corruption in the public services. It was concerned with officials, with detection and with disciplinary procedure. The citizen's grievance against the administration and the accountability of the political executive are different problems, and they were taken up in 1966 by the Administrative Reforms Commission, whose mandate was much wider.
4. Identify the gap in the 1964 machinery that the Lokpal proposal was meant to fill. The vigilance machinery reached public servants of the Union but not the political executive. A Minister was outside the Commission's jurisdiction, and prosecution of a public servant required previous sanction, which was itself used to delay and refuse. An institution that could inquire into Ministers, and ultimately into the Prime Minister, is what the Lokpal proposal was for, and it is the point at which every Lokpal Bill was resisted.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.