By Dilip Bobb
The tender was so precise and well-defined it would have given a car enthusiast a serious inferiority complex. The Lok Pal’s tender for the purchase of seven BMW cars specifically mentioned the model—the 3 Series 330 Li M Sport models launched earlier this year in India. It also had to be a long base version, which offers more passenger space, and it had to be white in colour. Collectively worth around Rs 5 crore, the tender said it was meant for the use of the Lokpal’s chairman and six members (the anti-corruption agency has a sanctioned strength of eight, but the appointment of two members has been hanging fire for years).
The procurement aims to provide a vehicle for each of the institution’s current members. The Lokpal’s tender mandates that the selected vendor must conduct a comprehensive seven-day practical and theoretical training programme for the ombudsman’s drivers and designated staff for which the cost will be borne exclusively by the vendor. This training, which must be completed within 15 days of the vehicles’ delivery, is required to cover “familiarisation with all controls, features and safety systems”, “emergency handling”, and a minimum of 50 to 100 kilometres on-road practice for each driver. The vendor will be required to cover all related expenses. The tender closes on November 6, 2025. This particular series is described by the manufacturer as “the most powerful car in its segment with the most advanced technology”.
The move did not go down well with prominent citizens and social media users. Former Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant posted on X: “They need to cancel this tender and go in for @makeinindia, Electric Vehicles—either Mahindra’s XEV 9E, BE 6 or Tata’s Harrier EV. They are top class vehicles.” Among others who criticised the plan are senior Congress leaders and Rajya Sabha MPs P Chidambaram and high-profile Supreme Court advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
Chidambaram, former Union home minister, said: “Why spend public money to acquire these cars? I hope that at least one or two members of the Lokpal have refused, or will refuse, to accept these cars.” Singhvi, who chaired the Parliamentary Committee on Lokpal and his father, former parliamentarian Dr LM Singhvi, first conceived the idea of a Lokpal in the 1960s, said: “To see this anti-corruption body now ordering BMWs for its members is tragic irony, the guardians of integrity chasing luxury over legitimacy.” The Congress leader also said the Lokpal has received 8,703 corruption-related complaints since its inception in 2019. These have led to only 24 investigations and six prosecution sanctions. “And now, BMWs worth Rs 70 lakh each. If this is our anti-corruption watchdog, it’s more poodle than panther.”
Supreme Court judges use BMW cars for their official vehicles, while the chief Justice of India is assigned a Mercedes. The Lokpal is officially entitled to the same perks as Supreme Court judges, but on the whole, the adverse reaction from several quarters is to do with public money being spent on an ombudsman that has very little credibility and a record that is highly questionable.
The current chairperson of the Lokpal is former Supreme Court judge Justice AM Khanwilkar. The members include retired judges Justice L Narayana Swamy, Justice Sanjay Yadav and Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi; former chief election commissioner Sushil Chandra; former chief secretary of Gujarat Pankaj Kumar; and former secretary in the Ministry of Women and Child Development Ajay Tirkey. The Lokpal has the powers to inquire into allegations of corruption against individuals, including the prime minister, ministers in the Union government and government officials.
The performance record of the country’s top anti-corruption body indicates a sharp decline in public engagement, with the number of complaints received by the ombudsman declining significantly over the recent years. While the number of complaints received by the Lokpal, which started functioning in 2019-2020, was 2,469 in 2022-23, it has fallen to just 233 for the present year till September, according to a recent report in The Hindu. Only 691 complaints have been received in the last three years, reported the newspaper.
According to the data available on the Lokpal’s website, it has ordered preliminary inquiries in only 289 cases against all the complaints it has received till date, and prosecution sanctions have been granted in just seven cases. Concerns have been raised about the Lokpal’s transparency, with no annual reports uploaded since 2021-22 and the prosecution wing only notified in June 2025, 12 years after the Lokpal Act was enacted.
Significantly, Justice Dilip B Bhosale, former chief justice of the Allahabad High Court, who was one of the four judicial members appointed in March 2019, resigned on January 6, 2020, just nine months after taking oath, citing personal reasons and lack of enough work. “I felt I was wasting my time. I was sitting absolutely idle. I used to get around 15-20 cases in a month. As chief justice of Allahabad High Court, I was used to working 14-15 hours a day, handling some 50-100 cases a month. I am told not much has changed since I left. If the Lokpal continues to function in this manner, it will fail to meet its objective. It will not deliver,” Bhosale told ThePrint.
The concept of a constitutional ombudsman was first proposed in Parliament by then Law Minister Ashoke Kumar Sen in the early 1960s. The first Jan Lokpal Bill was proposed by Advocate Shanti Bhushan in 1968 and passed in the 4th Lok Sabha in 1969, but did not get through the Rajya Sabha. Subsequently, “lokpal bills” were introduced in 1971, 1977, 1985, again by Sen, while serving as law minister in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet, and again in 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and in 2008, yet they were never passed.
Forty five years after its first introduction and after ten failed attempts, the Lokpal Bill was finally enacted in India on December 18, 2013, after the tenth attempt. The president of India gave his assent to Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act on January 1, 2014.
The real impetus for establishing a Lokpal, an anti-corruption body with powers to prosecute the highest in the land, was the Anna Hazare movement in 2011 which created enough pressure to force the then Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to pass the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013. It took another six years for the current Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government to appoint India’s first anti-corruption watchdog.
Yet, as RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj told The Hindu: “The Lokpal was created after a massive public campaign to ensure an independent authority could investigate big-ticket corruption involving top officials. Yet, in all these years, it has not sanctioned prosecution in any significant case. Most complaints are being dismissed on technicalities such as format errors, while serious corruption allegations go unaddressed.” Bhardwaj also questioned the Lokpal’s transparency and the pace of institutional development. “It hasn’t uploaded any annual report since 2021-22, and shockingly, its prosecution wing was notified only in June 2025—12 years after the Lokpal law was enacted. This reflects a lack of seriousness and accountability,” she said.
According to research by news outlets, 90 percent of complaints were rejected as being in the wrong format. Of 2,320 “defect-free” complaints received, only a handful resulted in action, mostly against lower-level officials.
Further, out of 620 orders issued by the Lokpal last year, only two involved prominent figures, such as Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief Shibu Soren, both Opposition leaders. Incidentally, both faced complaints filed by the same man: BJP MP Nishikant Dubey. The Lokpal also received three complaints against the prime minister last year, which were rejected. The Lokpal’s order said the complaints “borders on surmising and conjecturing; and is purely an election propaganda for cornering the opponent by posing a questionnaire.” In reaction, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh had posted on X, “Meanwhile, the Lokpal has certainly proved to be a Lok (Kalyan Marg) Pal?”
A major percentage of cases taken up by the Lokpal involve misdeeds in public sector banks. Administrative inefficiency has compounded the institution’s struggles. According to The Hindu, the Lokpal still lacks permanent staff in key positions, including the Director of Inquiry and Director of Prosecution. According to a parliamentary panel report, around 68 percent of corruption complaints received by the Lokpal were disposed of without any action in the past four years. Additionally, the Lokpal has not prosecuted a single person accused of graft during this period. The panel found that only three complaints were fully investigated, while 36 were at a preliminary stage.
The parliamentary panel, led by BJP member, the late Sushil Kumar Modi, criticized the Lokpal’s performance as unsatisfactory. The panel recommended that the Lokpal should not reject genuine complaints solely on technical grounds, such as format discrepancies. It urged the Lokpal to strengthen anti-corruption efforts, especially considering India’s leadership role in the G20 Anti-Corruption Working group.
The Lokpal was allocated a budget of Rs 197 crore in 2022-23, with an expenditure of Rs 152 crore till January 31. For the current fiscal year, it has been allotted Rs 92 crore. In 2022, the centre purchased a new office space for the Lokpal at the World Trade Centre in south Delhi for Rs 254.88 crore. The institution has been unable to utilize its allocated budget fully, indicating lack of resolve and inefficiencies in its functioning.
In a delicious twist of irony, the Prime Minister’s Office has now started a hotline (9851145045) for citizens to report bribery and other complaints to do with government servants or services. So where does that leave the Lokpal? The answer: literally in the lap of luxury, in the back seat of a brand new Rs 70 lakh BMW with all the bells and whistles; sadly, not much space for whistleblowers.
—The writer is former Senior Managing Editor, India Legal magazine