Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta Ripusudan Dayal is again in the news, for odious reasons this time. He is accused of having procured three posh houses built by a government agency: one jointly in his and his wife's name and one each in the names of his two sons. The officials concerned were said to have waived, while making allotments to the Dayal family, the rules applicable to the people in general. A Bhopal court has directed the Kohe-Fiza police (in Bhopal) to inquire into journalist-turned-activist Alok Singhai's complaint in this regard and register an FIR if a cognisable offence is made out. Dayal thus gets the dubious distinction of becoming the first Lokayukta of the State to face a police inquiry into corruption charges against him.

A retired judge of the Supreme Court, as well as former chief justice of the Sikkim High Court, Dayal had hit the headlines when he had picked up a row with the State's Chief Information Commissioner (CIC). The latter wanted the Lokayukta Organisation to part with the information, regarding a case investigated by the Lokayukta police, sought by an applicant under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and Dayal ruled out the applicability of the Act to the Lokayukta Organisation. CIC P.P.Tiwari had accused Dayal of trying to influence him in dismissing the applicant's appeal and issued a contempt notice to the Lokayukta. The matter is pending in the High Court.

Then Dayal had a problem with the Speaker of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, Ishwardas Rohani, who had issued to the Lokayukta and some officials in the Organisation a notice of breach of privilege for starting investigation of the alleged financial irregularities in the construction works on the Assembly premises and serving summons on some officials of the Assembly secretariat. The matter was taken by the Lokayukta to the Supreme Court which is yet to decide it.

Dayal had publicly attributed motives to CIC Tiwari and insinuated that he was playing the BJP game in order to derail the investigation of the corruption charges against several ministers pending before the Lokayukta. He made similar observations when Assembly Speaker Rohani sent him the notice for a breach of privilege. He again called a group of reporters to his residence to deny the allegations made in Singhai's complaint to the police --- and later by Bharatiya Jana Shakti (BJS) Party leader Uma Bharati and her ardent supporter-turned-bete noire Prahlad Patel. Dayal refused to come clean on the transactions made in the bank account of his Meerut-based friend Satyaprakash Agrawal, saying that it was his "personal matter". He, however, reiterated his charge that some powerful people were definitely behind the "conspiracy to weaken the institution of Lokayukta", though he would not say who.

Both Uma Bharati and Prahlad Patel have submitted, separately, of course, to the Governor bulky memoranda that include Dayal's bank account transactions in Bhopal, Delhi and Meerut, as well as the style of Dayal's disposal of cases in order to help the officials accused of corruption. Patel has, for instance, cited a case in which then Commercial Taxes Commissioner Vishwapati Trivedi was accused of helping an Indore firm which had allegedly indulged in various irregularities, including non-payment of taxes, and deprived the State exchequer of huge amounts of money.

The memoranda submitted to the Governor also show that Dayal had got his son Ashish Kumar Dayal appointed "Advocate on Record" in the Madhya Pradesh State Electricity Board (MPSEB) through secretary, energy department, Sanjay Bandopadhyaya whom the Lokayukta had taken off the hook in corruption cases (No. 15/99 and 16/99) by closing the case in 2005 after it was recorded on the file that prosecution should be launched. The memoranda also show the transactions amounting to crores of rupees in Dayal's several bank accounts.

Dayal had found a lot of sympathisers during his spat with the Speaker --- and also with the CIC. But he finds himself virtually isolated while putting up defence on corruption allegations against him. The only person to lend "moral support" to Dayal in this hour of crisis is Leader of the Opposition Jamuna Devi who says in a statement that if the officials of the Madhya Pradesh Housing Board (MPHB), a government agency, flouted the rules apparently at the behest of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan for allotting a house to Dayal, how can the Lokayukta be held responsible for that? What a nice way of making a former Supreme Court judge look like an innocent victim of officials' misdeeds!

The allegations of acquiring a few posh houses by bending the rules would not have probably agitated the people much, had Dayal had anything worthwhile to show to the people. He completed four years as Lokayukta this month and has not been able to launch prosecution against a single influential swindler of the public money so far. Even in the case of small fries accused of corruption, Dayal has a dismal record. He is sitting over the complaints against chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and over a dozen of his cabinet colleagues.

Dayal's not-so-honourable intentions were exposed when Leader of the Opposition Jamuna Devi submitted to him the complaint of what has come to be known as "dumper scam" against the chief minister and his wife Sadhna Singh. The Lokayukta did not even take cognisance of it till Ramesh Sahu, Congress activist, moved the special court more than a month later and got a direction to the Lokayukta police to investigate the matter and submit a report to the court within a month. That was on November 13 last year. Dayal's dissimulation was further revealed when the FIR was registered by the Lokayukta police in the name of a deputy superintendent of police and not on behalf of Ramesh Sahu who was the complainant, for the simple reason that making Sahu the complainant in the FIR would have given him the legal right to be associated with the progress of investigation. And there is hardly any progress till now.