Young guns of Bangalore on a journey to save Lok Ayukta

Piqued that the institution of Lokayukta has no one at the helm for more than three months, a bunch of 30-odd youngsters from Davangere are on a yatra to collect signatures to save the Lokayukta.

They had embarked on the yatra from Honalli taluk 13 days ago. After covering 900km, they reached Bangalore on Monday. Here, they met former Lokayukta Justice N Santosh Hegde at Freedom Park. These youth feel the sting of corruption in their village every time they seek to avail a government facility, but the Lokayukta’s raids have instilled a fear in the mind of the corrupt.

When these youth were asked to give an example of their encounter with corruption, one of them, Shakeel Ahmed, mentioned government hospitals. Everyone else nodded.
Sunil Kumar said he had to take his mother to the hospital recently. The hospital staff in Davangere refused to admit her until he paid them a bribe of Rs200. The next day, he said, he had to pay another Rs900 as bribe. He added that they had to buy medicines from elsewhere as the hospital staff said they did not have any.

“Even in the case of an emergency, when we have to take an ambulance, we first have to pay for fuel in the ambulance before they can take us anywhere,” said Ahmed, adding that the ambulance would just stop at the nearest petrol bunk and would not move till they put some fuel in the ambulance. “They don’t care that in case of an emergency, every second counts.”

One of them, Gurupaddaiah, said the Lokayukta has alleviated the situation. “People are aware of the Lokayukta; they are afraid. If someone asks for a bribe, we even have the number of the Lokayukta on our phone. They are afraid and they follow the procedure, instead of asking for bribes,” he said.

Elaborating on why they took up the yatra, Gurupaddaiah said they think that the government is trying to shut the institution of Lokayukta. He said if this happened, corruption would raise its ugly head again and people like him would suffer.

He said they have collected 9,000 signatures so far. Besides this, he said, they convinced 10,000 people to send letters to the chief minister, asking him to take the issue of appointing a Lokayukta seriously. During the course of their yatra, these youngsters are visiting villages along the way and going to colleges to collect signatures to keep Lokayukta alive in the state.

One of them said that everywhere they went, people saw the Gandhi cap on their head and presumed them to be
anti-corruption activists, even offering food and place to stay.

Justice Hegde, who met these youngsters from Davangere at Freedom Park, said: “The government can try all it wants to shut down the Lokayukta, but it is not going to happen. Do you think the people of Karnataka will allow them to shut down the Lokayukta?”
He added that the government, at best, can only delay the appointment of a Lokayukta, which is what it is trying to do now.

He said this way, the government was buying time to review the report he had submitted on illegal mining and file a B report.
However, he added, this too is not possible as the Lokayukta does not have the power to review reports. He said a report once filed, is filed. The government can either accept it or reject it, these are the only options it has.