Appointment of retired High Court Justice N.K. Gupta to the post of Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta has sparked a controversy in the state after Deputy Lokayukta U.C. Maheshwari, six years senior to new Lokayukta, told a newspaper that “the tradition of keeping senior over junior has been broken’’.
The state government appointed Justice Gupta as the new Lokayokta through an order issued on Monday evening. Gupta had retired as administrative judge from Gwalior High Court in June this year. Earlier, he worked with the state government as legal adviser and was appointed a High Court judge in 2010.
The post of Lokayukta in the state was lying vacant for over a year after the retirement of Justice P.P. Naolekar, who was given an extension of one year after his term expired in 2014. Naolekar was a retired Supreme Court justice, appointed as Lokayukta in 2009.
The government had, through a special cabinet meeting, amended the Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta and Deputy Lokayukta Act, 1981, to allow Naolekar to continue in office even after the completion of his term. The amendment was made in such a way that the incumbent Lokayukta could continue in office until the government finds a replacement or for a period of one year.
Social activist Ajay Dubey said, “The government has appointed Lokayukta in an unfair and non-transparent manner. It will be unethical that a senior judge will now be forced to report to a junior one,” adding that he had already filed a petition in High Court about the delay in appointment of Lokayukta.
Noting that the appointment is a “gross anomaly,” he said he is planning to move Supreme Court against it.
“The government is setting a wrong precedence in not only appointing a junior over senior, but not even forming a panel of judges to select the Lokayukta.”
The appointment of Deputy Lokayukta Maheshwari too was done in haste. Maheshwari was serving as a judge in MP High Court's Gwalior bench when he was appointed as Deputy Lokayukta. He resigned from the post a day before his appointment.
