Pilot seeks panel to check growth of corruption

Former Union minister Rajesh Pilot on Friday urged Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral to constitute a high-powered commission to recommend measures to arrest the growth of corruption.

In a letter to the prime minister, he said the growing nexus of criminals and underworld with politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen was a grave threat to the security of the nation.

Pilot -- who as internal security minister in the Narasimha Rao Cabinet had constituted the N N Vohra committee -- suggested that eminent personalities like Chief Justice J S Verma, former finance minister C Subramaniam, former chief election commissioner T N Seshan and former Union home secretary Vohra be included in the commission.

The commission, he wrote, should draw people from all the three pillars of democracy -- the legislature, judiciary and the executive. Pilot wrote that now that the menace has assumed such vast proportions, it would be appropriate to set up a commission of eminent people to examine the legal and administrative procedures which have failed to check its growth.

''You were forthright and categorical in your reply in Parliament that people may come and go but it is only the institutions of the State that can keep the nation going,'' he wrote, adding that it was this belief that made him set up the Vohra committee panel.