CHENNAI: Amid great expectations of appointment of a head of the search committee to set up Lokayukta members, a selection committee on Friday decided to appoint Justice K. Venkataraman, former judge of the Madras high court, as head of the search panel.
A Government Order (GO) was released on Friday evening. According to the notification, “In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (3) of Section 4 of the Tamil Nadu Lokayukta Act, 2018 (Tamil Nadu Act 33 of 2018), the selection committee hereby constitutes a search committee for the purpose of submitting the names for consideration for the positions of chairperson and members of Lokayukta.”
Accordingly, the composition of the search committee will be as follows. “Justice K. Venkataramanan (retd.) will be chairperson, while R. Krishnamoorthy, former advocate general of Tamil Nadu, and A. Pari, former IPS officer, will be members," the GO said.
Under the Tamil Nadu Lokayukta Act, the search committee will find the members, who will be functioning as Lokayukta.
Earlier, the selection committee was held at the secretariat and Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, assembly speaker P. Dhanapal and top government officials discussed the appointing of members of the search committee.
DMK chief and leader of Opposition, M.K Stalin, already refused to participate in the meeting alleging that Chief Minister Palaniswami himself had corruption cases pending against him, and the Assembly Speaker acted in a biased manner.
Even as the state government had introduced the Lokayukta Bill in July, the first meeting regarding this was held only on Friday. The selection process. The search committee would recommend either retiring or sitting judges from the high court with members having sound knowledge in government and public administration. Later, the recommended names would again be sent to the selection committee, which in turn, would forward the same to the Governor, who would appoint the chairman and members for the Lokayukta. The four members should have been experts in handling legal issues for at least 25 years, or in public administration and anti-corruption issues for 25 years.
