Public servants and corruption

THERE ARE A number of significant facets to the Supreme Court's recent ruling on public servants convicted on charges of corruption. At the most general or abstract level, the Court, which lamented the fact that ``corruption by public servants has now reached a monstrous dimension in India'', has drawn attention to the damage that could be inflicted on a democratic polity by a system which permits those convicted of corruption to continue holding public office. As the Court pointed out, the public interest could suffer irreparably if convicted public servants are entitled to retain office and allowed to perform official acts before they are judicially absolved. In declaring that convicted public servants should be treated as corrupt until otherwise established, the apex body has suggested, if only implicitly, the necessity of revising the ordinary jurisprudential presumptions regarding the nature and finality of a trial court judgment when appeals remain unexhausted, where it pertains to public servants. Evidently, the Court felt that this was necessary in the face of the alarming growth of corruption, the tentacles of which ``have started grappling even the institutions created for the protection of the republic''.

At a more specific level, the apex body - which was hearing the case relating to a bank officer - has ruled that the conviction of a public servant should not be stayed by an appellate or revisional court even if the sentence awarded to him was suspended. In doing so, the Supreme Court has made a clear distinction between the suspension of a sentence and the suspension of a conviction - an issue which generated considerable legal and political interest earlier this year following a Madras High Court ruling (in an unrelated case) to the effect that sentence and conviction are ``inseparable twins'' and that suspension of the former implies suspension of the latter. In ruling that convictions should not be suspended in cases where public servants are convicted of corruption, the apex body has reiterated - though arguably in a more forthright and clear-cut fashion - what has been stated in earlier judicial rulings, particularly that delivered by the same Court in State of Tamil Nadu v. A Jaganathan (1996).

While the Supreme Court's recent ruling has wide-ranging import, one question of immediate political interest is likely to be its relevance to Ms. Jayalalithaa, who was sworn in as Chief Minister despite being convicted in three corruption cases. Although the sentences in these cases have been suspended, her conviction has not been set aside. Insofar as Ms. Jayalalithaa holds public office without the help of a court order suspending her conviction, the Supreme Court's ruling has no immediate impact. But the judicial pronouncements have a direct bearing on the clutch of writ petitions before a large Constitutional Bench of the apex court challenging the validity of her appointment as Chief Minister. In the light of the Supreme Court's ruling that ``the court should not aid the public servant who stands convicted for corruption to hold public office until he is exonerated'', the legal challenge to the validity of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's appointment has taken on an altogether different dimension. Given that the Supreme Court has ruled out judicial approval for convicted public servants to continue in office, it would be no surprise if those who have contested the validity of her appointment regard the ruling as a major shot in the arm. By underlining the impropriety of convicted public servants holding office, the ruling lends a judicial stamp to the moral concerns which attended her ascension to the chief ministerial chair.

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