Shillong Oct 16: Slamming the MDA government for delaying in forming a search committee to identity persons who will become members of the Meghalaya Lokayukta, Leader of Opposition, Mukul Sangma said that the delay reflected complete lack of sincerity, concern and commitment on the part of the State government.

Mukul said this after attending a meeting of the selection committee under Lokayukta chaired by Chief Minister, Conrad K Sangma at the conference hall of the state convention centre.

“To ensure that this law (Lokayukta) acts as a deterrent to acts of corruption and to ensure corrupt free governance, we must ensure that the mandate of the law is operationalized in letter and spirit without any delay,” Mukul said.

He said that the Meghalaya Lokayukta Act, 2014 was a culmination of long drawn engagement on the demand of the people keeping in mind the need of the obudman with the sole intention of ensuring that the whole affairs of governance is somehow regulated by this authority and act as a deterrence from any tendency or lack of transparency, issue of corruption in public life by people occupying the high offices.

The Meghalaya Lokayukta has already had its Chairman but the members are yet to be appointed.

Besides the Chief Minister, the members of the selection committee include Leader of Opposition, Assembly Speaker, and chief justice of high court.

The Chief Minister said that the Search Committee will not find people who are eligible to be the members of the Lokyukta but no time frame has been fixed for completing the exercise.

The search committee has been formed under the chairmanship of former IAS, G P Wahlang to identity probable names who should be appointed as members of the Lokayukta.

However Mukul said that he has expressed his concern especially on the Supreme Court judgment in October last year which indicated that the state government must complete all exercises to ensure both judicial and non judicial members of Lokayukta are appointed, apart from Chairman, must be completed within a year.

“Our intention to have this Lokayukta is to remind people who occupy high offices that there is a law and institution which has been mandated to look into all alleged corruption including the office of the chief minister,” Mukul said.

“But the government is sitting more than one year which gives a wrong perception about the intent of the government. The government has to be very serious to ensure that the mandate of this Lokayukta Act, 2014 is operationalized in letter and spirit,” he stated.

He also said that there have been lots of allegations of corruption from all corners including the GHADC.

“This is happening because there seems to be no sense of fear for the law since the actual enforcement of this law is yet to be seen. Once the implementation is seen by the people, it will act as deterrence to acts of corruption. Therefore we must be seen that we are committed to response to the call of duty,” he said.