Accountability: Hitherto accountability has been so entrenched so as to vest in external authorities or institutions like Auditor General and other inspecting officers. The effort onwards should be to progressively introduce a system of periodical self-evaluation as is at present required in District Judiciary. Only the format of self-reporting should be revised made more comprehensive, factual and analytical.
Supervision: It should be made a continuing responsibility in the official hierarchy not a onetime exercise of an individual officer. Progressively everyone in the department should habitually exercise oversight over the functioning of the department, remove or get removed the bottlenecks, and when necessary act as the whistleblower.
Inspection: Formal regular inspections as prescribed are slowly being discontinued for so many plausible reasons. In Judiciary, surprise inspection of courts is useless and may lead to personalized projections in no way conducive to Judiciary’s independent functioning. There is a rule that if a High Court Judge does not visit for inspection the courts of a district for three years the District judge is required to visit and inspect the courts just as the High Court judge does and submit a report to the High Court. What a salutary, elevating and training rule for a District Judge. It is a self-executory rule, No order, no sanction no permission is required from any quarter. Not a single case of discharge of this responsibility available. Why nobody knows.
Reports: In our system, the timely publications of the annual reports are considered to be a vital link in Accountability to Civil society. One example will show how neglected this duty has become.
Annual Report and making it available to the public at reasonable cost:
Article 28 of Establishment of the Office of Wafaqi Mohtasib (Ombudsman) Order, 1983 provides as follows:
“28. Annual and other reports.- (1) Within three months of the conclusion of the calendar year to which the report pertains, the Mohtasib shall submit an Annual Report to the President.
(2) The Mohtasib may, from time to time, lay before the President such other reports relating to his functions as he may think proper or as may be desired by the President.
(3) Simultaneously, such reports shall be released by the Mohtasib for publication and copies thereof shall be provided to the public at a reasonable cost (emphasis added).
(4) The Mohtasib may also, from time to time, make public any of his studies, research, conclusions, recommendations, ideas or suggestions in respect of any matter being dealt with by the Office.
(5) The report and other documents mentioned in this Article shall be placed before the Federal Council or the National Assembly, as the case may be.”
Soon after my retirement in 1994, I called for a report with regards to the number of the copies of Annual Report published each year and it showed a continuous decline in number. I was told by the office of Wafaqi Mohtasib that the report is not being made public at all. The need for making such reports available to the public cannot be overemphasized. A failure to observe a very salutary requirement of the statute amounts to gross maladministration and the office of Wafaqi Mohtasib, which is supposed to be a watchdog over maladministration, should itself be publicly guilty of it is alarming.
As I write this in the year 2018, I am told that the Wafaqi Mohtasib Annual Reports are being published on the Internet regularly and are available for downloading by the public for free.
In other departments having similar requirements, practice is no different.
Experiences of a Lifetime 