New Delhi: Country's first Prime Minister
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was interested in setting up an
independent body to check corruption, former Election Commissioner G V G Krishnamurthy said on Sunday.
The issue of creating an ombudsman to fight graft had
come up for discussions at 3rd All India Law Conference at
instance of Nehru in 1962.
"The issue of appointing ombudsman was introduced
following a suggestion by Nehru and the modalities with regard
to such an office were discussed at this conference.
"The session on ombudsman was presided over by M C
Setalvad, the celebrated Attorney General of that time, and it
was unanimously resolved and adopted that an ombudsman be
appointed to deal with charges of corruption at both political
and official levels," Krishnamurthy told PTI in an interview.
The details and specific provisions for such a bill were
expected to be discussed and suggestions were to be made for a
debate on the measure so that it could be considered for
introduction in Parliament by the government, he said.
However, soon after that the whole attention of the
government was diverted towards Sino-India war that broke out
in 1962, and the bill could not be introduced, he said,
maintaining that after Nehru's death, the issue lost
attention.
Krishnamurthy, who was Election Commissioner between 1993
and 1999, had presented a paper at the law conference held
from August 12-14, 1962, at Vigyan Bhawan here and was chaired
by the late Prime Minister and attended by 1,500 delegates
including the then Chief Justice of India, Justice B P Sinha.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, August 21, 2011, 14:58