NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday pushed for early appointment of lokpal, rejecting the Centre’s argument that the process for appointment of the ombudsman mandated to check corruption in high places had been delayed because of the absence of a leader of Opposition (LoP) who, under the existing law, ought to be part of the selection committee.

The apex court said appointment of lokpal and its members by the selection panel, without including the LoP, would be perfectly valid under the existing law. Under the relevant rules, for a party to be recognised as “opposition”, it ought to have one-tenth strength of the 542-strong Lok Sabha –– a threshold no party could cross in the 2014 elections. The Centre cited this to explain why the appointment of lokpal had been delayed.

It said a bill was pending in Parliament to include the leader of the largest opposition party in the selection panel when there is no LoP. It also said a parliamentary committee had approved inclusion of the leader of the largest Opposition party in the absence of LoP, and argued that the anticorruption watchdog should not be appointed until Parliament passed the bill.

However, the court did not agree. “The Act, as it stands today (without the proposed amendment to include the leader of the largest political party in lokpal selection panel), is an eminently workable piece of legislation and there is no justification to keep enforcement of the Act under suspension till the amendments, as proposed, are carried out,” a bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Naveen Sinha said.

Under the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, which came into force on January 16, 2014, Lokpal was to be selected by a panel comprising the PM, the Chief Justice of India or an SC judge nominated by him, Lok Sabha Speaker, LoP and an eminent jurist to be selected by the first four members of the selection panel.

The bench said the law permitted selection of lokpal by a truncated panel and provided that absence of a member or a vacancy in the selection panel would not render the choice invalid. It clarified that this judgment was no impediment for Parliament to complete the process to amend the Act. The court accepted the arguments of advocates Shanti Bhushan and Gopal Shankaranarayanan, who said lokpal could be appointed even without the amendment and alleged that the Centre was using pendency of the bill as a ruse to delay making the anti-corruption body functional.

Justice Gogoi, who wrote the 31-page judgment, said, “If, at present, the LoP is not available, surely, the chairperson and other two members of the selection committee, namely, the Speaker of Lok Sabha and the CJI or his nominee, may proceed to appoint an eminent jurist as a member of the selection committee under Section 4(1)(e) of the Act.

“We also do not see any legal disability in a truncated selection committee to constitute a search committee for preparing a panel of persons for consideration for appointment as chairperson and members of lokpal.”

The SC said efforts to amend the Act to include the leader of the largest Opposition party in the selection panel was at best an attempt to streamline the working of the Act.

