Parliamentary panel said officials should take prior sanction from government to initiate bribery probe.
"Will the 'make-up' men be arrested?" That's how Anil Swarup, Secretary in the Ministry of Coal, reacted to a newspaper report that said a special Central Bureau of Investigation or CBI court had dropped all charges against former Telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh after it found that "the CBI had made up the charges against Ghosh."
It's rare for a serving bureaucrat to tweet against the government's investigating agency. But this angry response from the Coal Secretary reflects the anger among bureaucrats after the CBI charged Harish Gupta, a retired secretary, in the coal scam.
Now, a Parliamentary panel could come to the aid of the bureaucrats. A committee of lawmakers from the Rajya Sabha, headed by BJP's Bhupendra Yadav, has made several recommendations that protects bureaucrats from investigating agencies.
The committee that examined the Prevention of Corruption Bill has suggested that anti-corruption agencies should take prior sanction from the government to initiate a bribery probe. But the Centre or a state government will have to decide on such requests within four months.
This, however, will not apply to an official who gets caught red-handed accepting a bribe. The panel also recommends protecting retired bureaucrats.
D Raja of the CPI, however, distanced himself from the panel's view on prior sanction to investigate allegations against an official.
"There are some key issues like protecting a whistle blower and the issue of prior sanction that need to be addressed," Mr Raja told NDTV.
Anti-corruption activists say that the new proposal will dilute the prevent of corruption bill and the Lokpal act.
"The bureaucrats and the Ministers work together. If the power is given to the government then they will act together with ministers and no sanction will be given to those doing illegal acts," says activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan.
The Parliamentary panel's recommendations will now have to be approved by the cabinet before incorporating them as part of Prevention of Corruption Bill. But the government's approach seems to be clear: while it will have zero tolerance to corruption, corruption, it needs to protect the honest officials.