(ET)
The Supreme Court on Monday set a 10-day deadline for the central government to share a timeline on the much-delayed appointment of the Lokpal, the anticorruption ombudsman. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the parent ministry for high-level appointment, will have to file the reply by July 17, the next date of hearing. The top court was acting on a PIL filed by the NGO ‘Common Cause’, and argued by former law minister Shanti Bhushan, against the delay in appointing an ombudsman.
The central government had initially expressed its reluctance on the appointment as the law lacked teeth and the government was in the process of tightening the law by amending the Lokpal Act passed during UPA-II. A bench, led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who is next in line to be CJI (when CJI Dipak Misra demits office in October ), had, however, rejected the argument and asked the government to give effect to the law as it stood. But much time has lapsed since then.
