Disproportionate assets

        Disproportionate assets?

                       Dalip Singh Wasan, Advocate.

            Here in India and in all the civilized countries, we have provided that all who join public service must be clean i.e. during their tenure in office they should not take bribe, may not indulge in corruption, should not indulge in scams, scandals, muddles, should not take commission and they should not favour their own people.  These are the preconditions prescribed and we expect that the people in public service must give us clean service.  But often it is seen that people joining public serce go on foot, but when they return, they return on a costly vehicle.  They hold huge bank balances, start living in big buildings and some people are found having deposits in secret bank accounts and those too in foreign banks where they take an undertaking that their names shall never be disclosed.  Such things happen in all the countries who have declared themselves as democracies.

              We take an oath that all elected and appointed people shall serve the people in a honest manner and they shall not cheat the people.  But all these are paper transactions and it is on record that people in power are turning rich and it is also on record that they are corrupt and they are collecting money through illegal mans and that is the reason, there are some cases initiated against some of the public servants, but only small fries suffer and the big guns are safe even before the police and before the courts.  We have seen taht criminal cases are launched against some of the public servants, but those cases are prolonged with a desire that ultimately the evidence against those big guns fades away and they are acquitted with honour.

                If we conduct a survey only small fries are in jails and big guns are safe even in hands of the law, because law basis its judgment on the evidence and in such cases only weak evidence is collected and ultimately, these big guns are safe and they become more important in the public.  We are noting all assets but since there is no proof and none is coming out for giving evidence, the law becomes helpless. Law is operative only against the poor and the weak and the rich and powerful people can get supporting evidence and they are safe.

                    When we get declarations of assets, we do not ask them to give details from where these assets had come down nor we ask the people from where they could add some more assets during their tenure in office.  So these declarations of assets are mere formality and nothing more and we, the people of India should not feel pleasure that big guns could also be asked to give details of their assets.  Such declaration give us more fear from the rich and the powerful and we are condemned to more inferiority complex feeling that we are so poor.

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