Discuss the role and limits of the Indians Parliament in checkmating political corruption, with special reference to the Bofors payoff and the Securities scams. (1997)
Andreas Schedler (“Conceptualizing Accountability”, 1999) splits accountability into answerability — being made to explain — and enforcement — being made to suffer consequences. Parliament’s anti-corruption power lies almost wholly in the first: it can expose, inquire, legislate and discipline its own members, but it cannot prosecute. The period’s two great scandals show both reach and ceiling.
The role: instruments of answerability
- Floor devices — questions, adjournment motions and debate force ministerial statements on record.
- Financial committees — the Public Accounts Committee examines CAG audit reports.
- Joint Parliamentary Committees (JPCs) — ad hoc inquiries that can summon files and officials.
- Legislation — the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988, statutory powers for SEBI (1992), and later the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act 2013.
- Self-discipline — eleven MPs caught taking money to ask questions were expelled in December 2005, and Raja Ram Pal v. Hon’ble Speaker (2007) upheld the House’s power to expel.
Bofors: exposure without enforcement
Swedish Radio alleged in April 1987 that kickbacks had been paid on the howitzer contract with AB Bofors. A JPC chaired by B. Shankaranand was formed in August 1987; the opposition boycotted it as a Congress-majority body, and its 1988 report found no proof of payments to Indians — widely read as a whitewash. The decisive pressure came from outside: investigative journalism and a critical CAG report (1989), after which opposition MPs resigned en masse and Rajiv Gandhi’s government lost the 1989 election. Parliament amplified; the voter enforced. Prosecutions dragged on for two decades without a single conviction.
The securities scam: a JPC that worked
In 1992 Harshad Mehta‘s diversion of bank funds into equities through ready-forward deals exposed a hole of about ₹4,000 crore. The JPC under Ram Niwas Mirdha (1992–93) mapped the failures of banks, the RBI and the Finance Ministry; Finance Minister Manmohan Singh offered to resign, and its findings fed tighter bank-treasury rules and securities regulation. Yet a second JPC on the Ketan Parekh episode (2001) showed how incompletely the lessons had been absorbed.
The period also produced the JMM bribery case: MPs allegedly paid to defeat the July 1993 no-confidence motion were held immune in P. V. Narasimha Rao v. State (1998, 3:2) — a shield removed only when a seven-judge bench in Sita Soren v. Union of India (4 March 2024) ruled that bribery is not protected by Article 105(2).
The limits
- Majority arithmetic — a JPC mirrors the House, so the government investigates itself; the 2G JPC (2011–13) cleared the Prime Minister over an opposition dissent.
- No enforcement — findings are recommendatory; prosecution depends on an executive-controlled CBI.
- Partisanship and disruption — scandals become weapons; the 2010 winter session was lost over the demand for a 2G JPC.
- Self-interest — a Lokpal Bill first introduced in 1968 was enacted only in 2013 after street protest.
- External triggers — the CAG, press and courts, not the House, have usually broken the scandals.
Conclusion
Parliament checkmates corruption only when opposition numbers and public outrage coincide: Bofors cost a government its majority, and the securities JPC reformed regulation, but neither brought a politician to book. Answerability without enforcement makes Parliament an indispensable alarm, not a court — hence the case for a strong Lokpal and an independent CBI.