New Delhi, March 23 (PTI): The Supreme Court on Friday asked 12 Chief Secretaries to specify why they have not appointed Lokayuktas in their States and when they would do so. A Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and R Banumathi asked the Chief Secretary of Odisha to apprise the court about the status of the Lokayukta. It said the court had no information whether it had an anti-corruption ombudsman or not. The 12 States are Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi and West Bengal. Section 63 of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, states that every State shall establish a body to be known as Lokayukta. The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) petition, which also sought a direction to the States to provide adequate budgetary allocation and essential infrastructure for effective functioning of Lokayuktas. According to the petition filed by advocate and Delhi BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, received presidential assent on January 1, 2014 and came into force from January 16, 2014 but the executive had not established a Lokpal yet. According to the petitioner, many State governments were “deliberately weakening” the Lokayukta by not providing adequate infrastructure, sufficient budget and workforce.
