Monitoring of politicians

Email sent on 6-Apr-2011

Dear PM,

You said that appointment of CVC is an error of judgment. You realized that error after being rapped by supreme court. Before that media has been relentlessly highlighting corruption charges against PJ Thomas for months. But you chose to be silent and thought the issue will be buried under carpet like Bofors. You also said that you are taking full responsibility. Lip service is just not enough. Have you setup a commission of inquiry?

The biggest tragedy of our democracy is that not only our politicians are corrupt but also PM and CMs think that they can do whatever they like because they are elected by the people. Since our investigative agencies are not autonomous there is no check to stop wrong doing of our politicians.

I have a proposition to contain such error of judgment in future. 

1. Setup a monitoring group consisting of non political celebrity from different walks of life like Ratan Tata, Sunil Gavaskar, PT Usha, Usha Uthup, Barkha Dutt, Kiran Bedi etc and retired judges, professors and professionals. The number should be at least 1,000. The objectives are
1. pre-empt any potential corruption or minimize the impact of a corruption which already happened. If Raja was removed when he overruled your request of auctioning spectrum, 2G scam could have been avoided.
2. Removal of incompetent people from government.
3. speedy establishment of prima facie of the charges against concerned persons
2. Any controversy at state or central level will be referred to that group. Members of the group will deliberate the issue on TV channels and blogs, invite further comments from public and give their verdict on the issue within three months.
3. the verdict must be binding until it is reversed by any court.
4. It is not necessary that all the members of the group need to debate. But for a valid verdict at least 10% of the members should participate in the debate.
5. Group must have the authority to sack any MP, MLA or elected persons at Panchayat/corporation level except PM, Government officials, IPS officers. If the verdict goes against PM, it should be referred to Supreme Court for validation.
6. the verdict should be limited to whether concerned politicians/government officials/IPS officers are corrupt and need to be sacked. For scam like 2G, group will not have the authority to cancel 2G licenses or in the case of CVC it cannot cancel appointment of PJ Thomas. However it could sack home minister or Prithiraj Chauvan for misuse of power.
7. Quantum of punishment will vary from suspension/removal from the office to hefty fine twice the amount of perceived loss to barring from politics. However punishment should not include any jail term.
8. Initial members of the group will be appointed by the Government of India in consultation with retired chief justice of supreme court and validated by media. Subsequent members would be appointed by existing members themselves.
9. No member of the group will get any salary. However the group should have an office in each state with video link facility, a TV channel and an internet site to communicate between themselves and with public/media.
10. Law enforcement agencies must fully cooperate with the group
11. All CMs, ministers will be subject to annual performance evaluation by the group against some measurable pre defined KPI with a pass mark of 60%. Anyone failing to secure pass mark more than once should be treated as incompetent person and must be removed from the ministry.

We fed up with corruption and mediocrity. Rajiv Gandhi lost because of 64 crore Bofors scam. But you are surviving scam after scam. Each scam is many folds bigger than Bofors. Politicians must be held accountable to some independent body.