No Muslims as Lokpal or Its Members; 122 Lok Ayuktas Include Five Muslims

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* 50 Upa Lok Ayuktas include two Muslims

* No Lok Ayukta in Jammu and Kashmir and Puducherry

* Muslim Lok Ayuktas in Bihar, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi

* Except Kerala, no other state had Muslims as Upa Lok Ayuktas

INDIA has seen two Lokpals and 14 members since March 2019, with no representation of the Muslim community on board. Its first tenure saw eight members and six at present, according to a new book by Mohammed Abdul Mannan, At the Bottom of the Ladder: State of the Indian Muslims –https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0GF1Q9R25 – which quantifies Muslim presence in 150 key organisations, including Union ministries, departments, and other organisations.

The Lokpal and Lok Ayuktas Bill, passed by the Parliament in mid-December 2013, received the President’s assent on the first day of January 2014, a time when the world’s largest democracy was preparing for its 16^th general elections in nine phases with 834 million registered voters – the largest-ever polls in the world.

The act was amended in 2016 after its notification. It was only in the March-end 2019 that the country got its first Lokpal, who completed his tenure in May 2022. It had eight members in its first tenure without a Muslim, and again it had no representation of the largest minority community for the second time when six members were appointed in March 2024.

Members of the first tenure completed their three-year tenures beginning March 2019, except for one member who expired a year later. No Muslim is among its 11 officials, including the Secretary, at its office in New Delhi.

Lokpal is the first institution of its kind in independent India, set up to inquire and investigate allegations of corruption against public functionaries falling within the scope and ambit of this Act. The Lokpal is committed to address concerns and aspirations of the citizens of India for clean governance, and has to ensure all efforts within its jurisdiction to serve the public interest to eradicate corruption in public life. India is a signatory to the UN Convention against Corruption.

Corruption in public offices was one of the issues that brought the BJP, led by Narendra Modi, to power in 2014. Lokpal was to be a public ombudsman. The BJP-led NDA government reluctantly set it up only five years later, after a Supreme Court order. In 2021, it received no more than 30 complaints, with critical posts of inquiry and prosecution chiefs vacant, a third of its budget unused and a former member informing that no efforts were being made to make the Lokpal effective.

Article 14, a news platform that addresses threats to and failures of justice and deficiencies in the legal system, writes: “Article 14 is the most important fundamental right conferred by the Constitution of India. For a country that was found to have one of Asia’s worst bribery rates in 2020, there appear to be very few complaining of corruption in the government —if you count the number of cases registered with India’s corruption-fighting independent, national ombudsman.”

In a report in January 2022, it noted that the financial year 2019-20 witnessed Lokpal receiving 1,427 complaints and 110 complaints in 2020-21. Of the 1,427 complaints the Lokpal received in 2019-20, 85 per cent were “outside its jurisdiction” and were not admitted, while six per cent were returned due to complaints filed in “incorrect format”.

When it receives a complaint, the Lokpal either decides it will conduct a preliminary inquiry itself to determine if prima facie a case is established— either through its inquiry wing—or it can direct another agency like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), to investigate. In 2020-21, of the 110 complaints the Lokpal received, 69 per cent were closed after preliminary examination. A preliminary inquiry was ordered in 30 cases. Currently, the Lokpal has “crippling vacancies” within its secretariat, which is supposed to be staffed by 124 people.

The Lokpal is meant to inquire and investigate allegations of corruption against public servants, including former and current prime ministers, Union Cabinet ministers, members of Parliament, and Union government officers. Of the 30 complaints during 2021, the latest year for which data has been made publicly available, 11 were “closed” and the rest are under investigation. The Lokpal does not make available the nature of complaints and how they are handled.

One of Lokpal’s former members, a retired Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, alleged in 2020, after his resignation, that the Lokpal’s chairman at that time had “no interest” in ensuring the institution makes good its mandate. When it was first created by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA-2) government, there had been criticism that the design of the Lokpals, at New Delhi and states, has been ridden with inadequacies – a complaint to the Lokpal can only be made in English.

The promise of tackling corruption and establishing a Lokpal was a prime factor in the rise of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After widespread protests led by anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare in 2011, the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh enacted the Lokpal and Lok Ayuktas Act in 2013. More than a decade after it was first demanded, seven years after it brought down a government, the Lokpal “is a shadow of what it was meant to be, and those involved in its creation have either moved on or become supporters of the BJP,” noted the news portal.

The BJP rode the anti-corruption wave, inspired by Anna Hazare, to come to power in 2014, successfully toppling the UPA-2 government led by the Indian National Congress. Over nearly four years of his first term, Narendra Modi did not chair a single meeting of the Lokpal selection committee, as he was supposed to be as the prime minister, revealed a 2018 Right to Information query. In 2017, Hazare questioned Modi’s continuing inaction on the Lokpal. In 2018, he sat on a six-day protest fast.

The Lokpal was meant to be independent of the government, headed by a chairperson who must be a former Chief Justice or Justice of the Supreme Court and is supposed to be staffed by eight members, half of whom are judicial members – former judges. The selection of the chairperson and members is done through a selection committee comprising the Prime Minister, Speaker of Lok Sabha, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, the Chief Justice or a sitting Supreme Court Justice nominated by the Chief Justice, and an eminent jurist.

It was only after an order from the Supreme Court that India got its first Lokpal, former Supreme Court justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose in March 2019.  There was then no Leader of the Opposition, and Mallikarjun Kharge, the leader of the single-largest party, Indian National Congress, boycotted the selection meeting as the government only invited him as a “special invitee”, with no role in the selection.

Lok Ayuktas and Upa Lokayuktas in States

Telangana became the 27^th state to appoint Lokaykta – and Upa Lokayukta. Lokayukta can neither be dismissed nor transferred by the states. For removing them, an impeachment motion has to be passed by the state Legislative Assembly. Maharashtra was the first state to appoint Lokayukta in 1971. The anti-corruption and maladministration ombudsman has the power to probe allegations of corruption against public functionaries like the Chief Minister, Deputy CMs, Ministers, Assembly Speaker and Deputy Speaker, MLAs and government officials.

The Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) in 1966 recommended the setting up of this institution at the state level “to improve the standards of public administration, by looking into complaints against the administrative actions, including cases of corruption, favouritism and official indiscipline in administrative machinery.” It had also called for the establishment of a Lokpal of India.

A Lokayukta works along with the Income Tax Department and the Anti Corruption Bureau. No complaint can be lodged for any issue that is more than five years old – in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan it is eight years.

Lokayukta is usually a former High Court Chief Justice or former Supreme Court judge and has a fixed tenure and is appointed after consultations with the High Court’s Chief Justice, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, the Chairman of the Legislative Council, the Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly and the Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council. The appointment is then made by the Governor.

There are no Lokayuktas in Jammu and Kashmir and Puducherry. Several states do not have Upa Lokayuktas. Except for Bihar, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Delhi, no other state had a Muslim as Lok Ayukta. Except for Kerala, no other state had Muslims as Upa Lok Ayuktas.

To read and obtain more data, please visit:

At the Bottom of the Ladder: State of the Indian Muslims –

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