Wake up, Justice Hegde 'orders' youth

Call for young denizens to play a key role in weeding out ills

Sounding like Swami Vivekananda, former Lokayukta justice N Santosh Hegde on Saturday appealed to the youngsters to wake up and cleanse the system before it reaches peril.

He was addressing students at the inauguration of cultural activities for the year 2012-13 at Maharani’s Women’s Arts and Commerce College in the city.

Saying that all the three pillars of democracy — legislature, executive and judiciary — and media considered as the fourth estate are sapped of energy owing to rampant corruption, Hegde gave a call to youth to change the attitude of the society.

In the recent days, success is the only criterion to evaluate a person, leaving aside the means through which he could attain success. He also advised the students to take oath against bribe; don’t bribe or accept bribe.

Taking into count the scams of Rs one crore and above that has dent the image of the nation for the past several years, Hegde valued the scams at Rs 9,000 lakh crore.

Referring to the recent remarks of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh defending the decision to hike diesel price to compensate the loss incurred by public sector oil companies, Hegde said; had the government taken steps to curb corruption, the amount lost in irregularities could have been utilised to compensate the losses of oil companies, instead of overburdening the common man.

Giving an account of rise of scams since the post independence era, Hegde said ‘Jeep scam worth Rs 17 lakh was the first to tumble out in the year 1948, followed by infamous Bofors worth Rs 60 crore in the year 1986, 2G scam worth Rs 1.76 lakh crore in 2010 and coal scam worth Rs 1.86 lakh crore in 2012.

Drawing an analogy between the elected representatives then and now, Hegde said the constituent assembly of 1946 had a debate on a serious issue.

Who should have the right to elect their representatives? Should every Indian be given right to contest the polls?

While one of the members for making educationally qualified candidates mandatory to take part in the hustings, another had a disagreement. Another member asserted that it would be unfair to make education as criterion as 80 per cent of the total population (then at 40 crore) of India is illiterate.

If complied with the decision, democracy will be restricted to only 20 per cent of the literate masses. The member who had argued for education was remorseful and supported the fellow member.

Hegde said that such was the quality of elected representatives who instead of holding the proceedings to ransom, respected each others deliberations.

This assumes significance when the recent incidents of Rajya Sabha members fighting inside the house and a legislator in Karnataka misbehaving at the time of floor test among several other incidents are reported daily.

MLA H S Shankarlinge Gowda, joint director for collegiate education T N Prabhakar, principal K S Lakshman Gowda, principal of science college H B Mallikarjuna Swamy and others were present.