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Govt plans to clip CVC's wings

George Iype in New Delhi

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government is planning to make the Central Vigilance Commission a three-member statutory body to check the threat posed by Chief Vigilance Commissioner N Vittal.

One senior official said Vittal's assault on corruption in the bureaucracy and his campaign against the political establishment has made him another "intolerant bureaucrat like T N Seshan". Therefore, the government has decided to turn the CVC into a three-member affair, like the Election Commission, to curb Vittal's powers.

Officials in the Prime Minister's Office said that the government is "upset and angry" at Vittal's decision to refer the closed Jain hawala case to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

"As per the powers bestowed on him, Vittal is only empowered to probe the conduct of government employees, not political leaders. But he is exceeding his limits because the CVC's statutory powers have not been defined," a PMO official told rediff.com.

He said former chief election commissioner Seshan behaved similarly, using his unbridled powers when he alone headed the commission to browbeat politicians and the government.

To curtail Seshan's powers, the P V Narasimha Rao government then had inducted two more election commissioners, Dr M S Gill and G V G Krishnamoorthy.

"Now the BJP government plans to clip Vittal's wings the way Congress government did Seshan's," the PMO official said.

Officials, quoting the Supreme Court order on which the current CVC is based, said Vittal is not omnipotent. As per the CVC Act, all vigilance commissioners are of equal rank and all decisions have to be taken in consultation.

But Vittal, clearly side-stepping this provision, shot off the names of some politicians involved in the Jain hawala case to CBI Director R K Raghavan without consulting his colleague, Vigilance Commissioner V S Mathur.

Rattled by Vittal's increasingly public campaign against politicians and bureaucrats, the government is now seriously thinking of curbing the CVC's powers.

In 1998, the Supreme Court, during the Jain hawala case, directed the government to insulate the anti-corruption agencies against political interference by enabling the CVC to supervise these agencies.

Vittal, then the Public Enterprises Selection Board chairman, was appointed as the country's first chief vigilance commissioner of the newly-created Central Vigilance Commission.

In deference to the SC order, the then BJP-led government set out to make the CVC a statutory body.

The government then issued an ordinance to confer statutory powers on the CVC. Later, an amendment was made and another ordinance issued. To replace these two ordinances, a bill was later brought forward in the Lok Sabha and passed in the House.

But the Vajpayee government fell last year before it could pass the bill in the Rajya Sabha and make it a necessary legislation for the CVC.

Since the ordinance was due to lapse on April 5, 1999, the government, acting on the advice of the additional solicitor-general and attorney-general, decided to issue a resolution letting the CVC continue functioning. The government also asked a Joint Select Committee of Parliament, headed by Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar, to study the CVC's powers.

Now that Vittal's tirade against the establishment appears to be increasing, the Vajpayee government wants the JSC to quickly frame the CVC Bill and make the anti-corruption body a multi-member commission.

Sources said Union Home Minister L K Advani is likely to meet Pawar soon to ensure that the CVC Bill is introduced in the forthcoming budget session of Parliament. And thus clip Vittal's wings.

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