Lessons of iron....lokayukta of karnatka

The Karnataka Lokayukta’s report on illegal mining is due to be submitted to the state government over the weekend, and some of its findings have been reported by this newspaper. It estimates that Rs 1,827 crore of income was lost by the state administration in just 14 months in 2009-10, and just from the illegal export of iron ore from mineral-rich Bellary district. The report, product of intensive and careful work by Justice Santosh Hedge, the state’s Lokayukta, should serve as a damning exposure of how illegal mining has grown and warped the state’s politics and governance.


What is necessary, therefore, is to ask how this report will be acted upon. At a time when there is considerable public anger at perceived corruption, and a widespread belief that it is tolerated by the political class, it would be difficult and dangerous to sweep the report under the carpet. But there are knotty institutional questions, too, to be considered. The authority of the Karnataka Lokayukta comes from his personal integrity and high public profile — not really from the powers vested in the office by the 1986 law that governs it. Justice Hegde has, in the past, urged the Karnataka act be used as one of the bases for a Central equivalent, the Lokpal. The response to his report shall be watched carefully by those who wish to evaluate the strength and utility of the institution.



What is unquestionable is that the 8,000-page report will lay out the degree to which all of Karnataka politics, across party lines, has been implicated in illegal mining. This newspaper, in a series of investigative reports last year, laid out how local administration had been subverted and regulators ignored or rendered toothless by the Reddy brothers of Bellary in particular. This report, too, is expected to be a reminder that the reform of mining regulation, and greater transparency in allocating and overseeing mineral rights, is essential to remove the malign influence of resource wealth from the politics of several states, especially Karnataka’s.