Kandivli resident moves high court for protection of whistleblowers

A Kandivili resident has approached the High Court of Bombay raising concerns about the victimisation of people speaking the truth as the act passed in Parliament years ago to protect the whistleblowers remains just on paperThe Lok Sabha had passed the Whistleblowers Protection Act in 2011 and the Rajya Sabha cleared it in 2014 however till date neither the state nor the central governments have framed rules for the implementation of its provisionsThe Public Interest Litigation PIL was filed last week by Raja Basu who once worked with the Shipping Corporation of India a Union government enterprise Basu who claims to be a whistleblower said he made numerous complaints to the Centre CBI Chief Vigilance Commissioner CVC and the Prime Ministers Office alleging wrongdoings and corruption within the organisation However instead of being applauded for his courage he was subjected to enquiries and departmental action and then terminated from service He had been filing these complaints since 2009 and was sacked in 2017 Basu said he would have kept his job had the Act been enforcedJust on paperldquoDespite there being a legislative scheme whistleblowers continue to face punitive transfers are falsely implicated in criminal and departmental proceedings and at times even murdered In fact the judiciary has started taking judicial notice of the fact that whistleblowers are victimisedrdquo the PIL readsAdvocate Rajeshwar Panchal who is representing Basu said ldquoThe Centre in January 2017 gave the Supreme Court assurances that suitable amendments to the Act would be made for consideration However the Centre seems to have done nothing about it In other words both the Centre and the state have not framed any rules as required under Sections 25 and 26 of the Act respectively Resultantly the Act remains just on paper and the whistleblowers are being deprived of their protection under the ActrdquoFor not framing the rules the Centre had told the SC that some provisions of the Whistleblowers Protection Act were overlapping with that of the Right to Information Act and the Whistleblowers Protection Act needed amendments Panchal said ldquoHowever five years have passed since the Centres statement in the SC in 2017 and nothing has happenedrdquo he addedProtection for othersThrough his PIL Basu wants the implementation of the provisions in the Whistleblowers Protection Act to ensure protection to all those who dare to raise their concern against wrongdoings ldquoI failed to get protection as the Whistleblower Protection Acts provisions have not been implemented by the Government of India I have suffered and do not want others to suffer simply because of honesty and for raising their voice against corruption After all integrity and honesty of public servants are the bedrock of the rule of lawrdquo Basu saidldquoIt is unfortunate that in the country whose national emblem contains the slogan of Satyamev Jayate whistleblowers who stand by truth are victimised in various ways Some are falsely implicated in criminal cases while whistleblowers who are public servants face departmental enquiry and at times some are even murdered like Satyendra Kumar Dubey That the whistleblowers are victimised is fact and even courts have takenjudicial notice of this in various cases The Whistleblowers Protection Act 2011 enacted by Parliament has not been implemented by the government of the day that came to power especially on crusade against corruption on the ground that some provisions thereof need to be amended However nothing has been done by it despite having assured the apex court in 2017 These facts speak in volumes about ground realities Lets hope the petition filed by us would bring some relief to the whistleblowersrdquo Panchal saidDubey was an engineer with the National Highways Authority of India and a whistleblower who had exposed corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral highway project He was murdered in 2003