New Delhi, Sep 13 (Inditop.com) Responding to Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan’s proposal, Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily Sunday said there should be no need of prior approval to prosecute corrupt officials.
Moily also favoured several changes in the anti-corruption law to contain the malady, which he said “is undermining social cohesion and wider participation of citizens in economic and political processes”.
In his valedictory address to a two-day seminar on ‘Fighting Crimes Related to Corruption’ at Vigyan Bhawan here, Moily also exhorted the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to increase its conviction rate in corruption cases to instil more fear in corrupt officials.
The wide range of changes in the Prevention of Corruption Act that Moily proposed in the seminar jointly organised by the CBI and Lok Nayak Jayprakash Narain National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science included a provision for “statutory protection for whistleblowers and victim protection”.
Endorsing the chief justice’s views, expressed on the first day of the seminar, calling for seizure of corrupt officials’ properties, Moily said: “The Corrupt Public servants (Forfeiture of Property) Bill as suggested by the Law Commission should be enacted without further delay.”
He also said: “There should be no need for prior sanction to prosecute a public servant who has been trapped red-handed or found in possession of assets disproportionate to known sources of income.”
The other changes that Moily suggested included “immediate implementation of the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act 1988.” The law enacted in 1988 by the erstwhile Rajiv Gandhi government is yet to be implemented.
Moily also sought widening the anti-corruption law to include acts like “violation of the oath of office, gross perversion and misuse of the constitutional provisions, abuse of authority by unduly favouring or harming someone, obstruction of justice, squandering public money and collusive bribery” etc within the ambit of corruption.
He said “there is an emerging global consensus that fighting corruption and building ‘good governance’ are essential for the socio-economic development of any nation”.
“The prevalence of corruption undermines social cohesion, wider participation of citizens in economic and political processes, distorts allocation of resources and delivery of public services particularly damaging the interest of the poor and marginalised sections of society,” Moily added.
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