What the Act Has Achieved, and What It Has Not

In one line

The Act has produced a workable law against the small bribe taken in cash and has not produced a workable law against anything else.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 has strengthened the framework by consolidating the law, widening the definition of public servant, providing exclusive trial by special Judges, supplying a presumption that makes the trap case triable, and, since 2018, punishing the giver and the commercial organisation; it has failed to address detection, delay, the two sanction gates, and the offences that involve no cash.

What it has achieved

A consolidated and current law. One statute covering the field, amended in 2018 to align with the United Nations Convention against Corruption.

A wide definition of public servant, reaching corporations, government companies, universities, aided institutions, cooperative societies receiving aid, service commissions, judges, arbitrators and, after the Ramesh Gelli decision, officers of private banks.

A triable offence. The combination of the trap, the recovery, independent witnesses and the section 20 presumption makes the small bribery case provable, which the general law of the Penal Code did not.

Exclusive trial by a qualified judge, without committal.

Liability of the giver and of the company, since 2018, with the adequate procedures defence, which gives compliance programmes a legal purpose.

Attachment of the proceeds, and the linkage to the money laundering statute.

And a deterrent that operates at the bottom of the administration. The possibility of a trap is a real constraint on the officer who would otherwise demand a payment across a counter, and it is the Act's genuine achievement.

What it has not achieved

Detection. The Act creates offences and says nothing about how they are found. Every case begins with a complainant willing to be part of a trap, and the complainant is the person who wanted the work done and must still deal with the department afterwards.

The offences without cash. The commonest official deviance, described in that chapter, is the decision made for a friend, the file held for eight months and the discretion exercised for a reason that is never stated. Section 13's clause (d) reached the first of these and was removed in 2018; nothing reaches the second or third at all.

Delay. Corruption trials take as long as any other, and the day-to-day direction in section 4 has not changed that. A conviction fifteen years after the event deters nobody and punishes a different man.

The two gates. Section 17A approval and section 19 sanction, each granted by an authority within the same administration. The three-month time limits are an improvement and they do not answer the objection, because a refusal ends the matter and no appeal is provided.