Constitutional Adviser to Bikaner continues....

They would overlook the faults of their party men and would take action only against those with whom they were not friendly.

My advice was that they should appoint some independent person from the judiciary with full powers to punish when he found a person guilty or about whose integrity he felt suspicious.

I gave them the illustration of one of the Chief Justices of the Allahabad High Court, Sir Grimwood Mears, who stopped corruption in the judiciary of the United Provinces by dealing strictly with persons who were reported corrupt to him.

His view was that no honest person ever got the reputation that he was corrupt and a person who was reputed corrupt was necessarily corrupt. Another instance I gave them was of Mr. Bosworth Smith who was Deputy Commissioner in the Punjab. His modus operandi was to openly insult
corrupt officials.

The fear that he thus created in the minds of the civil servants was such that they were not prepared to take the risk of an open insult from him. I mentioned the cases which I have related earlier in connection with my practice at Gurdaspur.

The Bikaner Government had appointed a committee presided over by a High Court judge to suggest ways and measures to stop corruption. It had produced a voluminious report but no one was interested in giving effect to its recommendations.

I went through it and found a number of useful suggestions which the popular ministers were not prepared to accept. They insisted that they alone could suppress corruption as they knew who was corrupt and who was not corrupt. The matter ended there and no action was taken as long as I was there.

To be continued...