New Delhi: Former Supreme Court judge Pinaki Chandra Ghose is likely to be appointed as India’s first Lokpal, an anti-corruption ombudsman. Justice Ghose, 66, retired as a Supreme Court judge in May 2017. He is a member of the National Human Rights Commission since June 29, 2017.
Sources said his name was understood to have been in active consideration by the Lokpal selection panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There was no official announcement of his appointment by the government. His appointment, if made, may trigger a political storm as Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge had boycotted the panel’s meet on Friday.
The law envisaging the appointment of a Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas in states to look into cases of corruption against some categories of public servants was passed on 2013. The development comes a week after the Supreme Court asked attorney-general K.K. Venugopal to inform it within 10 days of a possible date for the meeting of the selection panel.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S.A. Nazeer and Sanjiv Khanna was on March 7 told by Mr Venugopal that the Lokpal search committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai had recommended three panels of names to the selection committee for appoin-
tment of the chairperson, judicial and non-judicial members in the anti-graft body.
