LLM Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration Criminology 2018 Question Paper with Solutions

(a) Public Accounts Committee

The Public Accounts Committee is best understood not as a body but as one stage in a cycle, and the cycle is prescribed by the Constitution. Parliament sanctions expenditure through the Appropriation Act. The executive spends. The Comptroller and Auditor General audits and reports. Article 151(1) requires his reports on the accounts of the Union to be submitted to the President, who causes them to be laid before each House. The Committee then examines those reports and takes evidence. The Government answers by action taken notes. The Committee reports again on those answers. That is the accountability loop, and the Committee occupies the fourth stage of it.

Its constitution is procedural rather than statutory. It is set up every year under Rule 308 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha, first constituted in 1921 under the Government of India Act, 1919, making it the oldest of the parliamentary financial committees.

Its raw material has grown, and the case that grew it is worth working. In Association of Unified Tele Services Providers v. Union of India, (2014) 6 SCC 110, decided on 17 April 2014, private telecom licensees challenged Rule 5 of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Service Providers (Maintenance of Books of Accounts and other Documents) Rules, 2002, under which the Comptroller and Auditor General proposed to examine their books, arguing that a private company's accounts are outside Article 149. The Supreme Court upheld the Rule, holding that spectrum is a national resource, that under a revenue sharing licence a share of the licensee's gross revenue is money owed to the Consolidated Fund, and that the audit may go so far as is necessary to see whether the Union is receiving its due share. It confined the audit to that revenue purpose and grounded it on the constitutional requirement that Parliament know how the nation's wealth has been dealt with.

(b) Central Vigilance Commission

The Central Vigilance Commission is the Union executive's own integrity institution, and its history is the reason its powers look the way they do. It was created by an executive Resolution of 11 February 1964 on the recommendation of the Santhanam Committee on Prevention of Corruption, which had been constituted in June 1962 and reported in 1964. For thirty four years it had no statute.

It acquired one because the Supreme Court ordered it. In Vineet Narain v. Union of India, (1998) 1 SCC 226, decided on 18 December 1997, a petition arising from the seizure of the Jain hawala diaries alleged that the investigating agencies had failed to act against the politicians and officials named in them. The Court supervised the investigation by continuing mandamus, refusing to direct its outcome but requiring progress reports, and then issued structural directions: statutory status for the Commission; superintendence over the Central Bureau of Investigation in Prevention of Corruption Act matters; selection of the Bureau's Director through a committee with a minimum tenure of two years; and the abolition of the Single Directive, which had required prior approval before investigating officers of and above the rank of Joint Secretary. An Ordinance followed in 1998 and then the Central Vigilance Commission Act, 2003.

Its functions are in section 8 and should be given by clause. Superintendence over the Delhi Special Police Establishment so far as it investigates offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, and the power to give it directions, subject to an express proviso that the Commission may not require a case to be investigated or disposed of in a particular manner. Inquiry into references from the Central Government against its employees and those of public sector undertakings. Inquiry into complaints against the senior categories listed in section 8(2). Review of the progress of investigations and of pending sanction applications. Advice to the Government on vigilance matters. And superintendence over the vigilance administration of Ministries and public sector undertakings, exercised through Chief Vigilance Officers, which is the bulk of its actual work. Section 11 gives it civil court powers and section 12 makes its proceedings judicial proceedings.

The honest criticism is that the Commission advises. It has no investigating machinery of its own and depends on the Bureau and on departmental vigilance officers. Its advice on departmental action can be departed from by the disciplinary authority for reasons recorded. Its superintendence covers only the Prevention of Corruption Act work of the Bureau, and the Bureau still needs State consent under section 6 of the 1946 Act to operate in a State, several States having withdrawn theirs.

How the two compare

Conclusion. The two bodies attack the same problem from opposite ends of the executive. The Public Accounts Committee comes from outside, through Parliament and the auditor, works after the money is spent, and has publicity as its only weapon. The Central Vigilance Commission works from inside the administration, before and during, and has a statute, a protected appointment and superintendence over the investigating agency; but it advises where the Committee reports, and Common Cause shows how narrow the difference turns out to be when the executive is determined. Between them they cover the ground, and neither can punish anybody.