They showed the way

Governance NOw, March 1-15, 2011


TN Seshan | No bureaucrat transformed himself and the public office he holds in such a spectacular way as TN Seshan did as the chief election commissioner of India between 1990 and 1996. From a “lapdog” of the Nehru-Gandhi family, he became the “bulldog” of democracy and turned the election commission into a powerful and independent body that came to be feared by the political parties. Stretching the limits of his power, he cleaned up the entire electoral process through a series of measures – put a limit on electoral spending for the candidates, prevented defacement of public places, forced candidates and parties to submit full details of election expenses for scrutiny, stopped misuse of government resources in campaigning, seized unlicenced firearms, banned liquor sale on the eve of polling and forced voters to use identity cards. These measures had dramatic effects. So much so that a scared political establishment turned election commission into a three-member body in 1993. But his legacy endures.

James Michael Lyngdoh | None other than Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi made this name so famous. Piqued by the fact that Lyngdoh dared to challenge the state government on the timing of elections soon after the post-Godhra riots and postponed it by six months on the plea of a vitiated communal environment, Modi went on a public offensive, calling his name in full to highlight his Christian identity. But nothing deterred the man who held the office of the CEC between 2001 and 2004. The year 2002 presented him another big challenge: to hold a free and fair election in J&K amidst a standoff with Pakistan, boycott by the separatists and militants’ violence. He warned off the army who used to assist the state in poll rigging, mobilised local police and paramilitary forces, introduced voter cards, updated and verified electoral rolls and held what was hailed by one and all as the first free and fair elections and a triumph of “ballots over bullets”.

N Vittal | Hardly anybody had heard of the central vigilance commission (CVC) before this bureaucrat held the office between 1998 and 2002. CVC wasn’t even a statutory body then (it became one after the CVC Act of 2003) and yet, he emerged as a crusader against corruption. He put the names of the mighty IAS and IPS officers found guilty of corruption charges on the CVC website, which he had set up. By the end of the tenure, 4,000 plus names of public servants were listed on the website. He even forwarded a complaint against the then minister Ram Jethmalani to the CBI. His other initiatives included a ban on post-tender negotiations in government purchases except with the lowest bidder, vigilance awareness campaigns, a citizens’ guide to fight corruption and public campaigns against corruption. All these led to flooding of CVC with complaints. Unlike now, nobody said then that they came to grief by approaching the CVC.

Vinod Rai | He is another bureaucrat to stand up and be counted after TN Chaturvedi brought glory to the office of Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) with his reports on the Bofors deal in the late 1980s. Rai took over as the CAG in 2008 and has since then consistently hit the headlines by exposing one scam after the other. He started off with warning against the potential scam in the CWG deals much before it actually burst forth. He was ignored and the result is for all to see. Last year, his audit exposed another big scam in the 2G spectrum allocation, pegging the loss to the exchequer at Rs 1.76 lakh crore. It was his report that finally nailed the government’s lie and led to A Raja’s ouster and subsequent arrest. Early this year, CAG hit the headlines again by exposing what is described as the ISRO spectrum scam. The spectrum deal with Devas Multimedia now stands scrapped.

TN Mishra | The last time, in the recent memory, our premier investigating agency carried out a daring raid on a real big cookie on its own was in 1998. The CBI entered the mighty business tycoon Dhirubhai Ambani’s apartment in Mumbai with a search and seizure warrant to probe into the leak of sensitive official documents. Trinath Mishra was ‘acting’ director of the CBI then. The raid, which apparently didn’t have the approval of the Vajpayee-led government, led to his removal from office within a fortnight. He had not even completed a year in office and though his name figured in the probable candidates, RK Raghavan was made the CBI director. There was no fixed tenure for the CBI directors then. The raid on Ambani was preceded by a few others, including one on Dawood’s henchman in Delhi Romesh Sharma and Reliance Industries’ Delhi representative V Balasubramaniam (better known as Balu), which provided Mishra with sufficient grounds to raid Ambani. None of his successors has dared to act on his own despite a fixed tenure.