Tenure of Lokayukta Justice SS Kothari extended by 3 years

Jaipur: Rajasthan government has extended the tenure of Lokayukta Justice SS Kothari by three years. The announcement was made just two days before Justice Kothari’s five-year tenure was come to an end.

The Rajasthan government’s department of personnel (DoP) got the approval for a circular regarding extension of the tenure from the cabinet. The government will make amendments to Lokayukta Act as according to the law, the maximum tenure of Lokayukta is five years.

Rajasthan government will likely first issue an ordinance with regard to the amendment. Once the ordinance is issued, the tenure will be extended up to 2021.

Justice Kothari had been appointed Lokayukta during the tenure of the previous Congress government on March 23, 2013. Justice Kothari is the 12^th Lokayukta in Rajasthan; however, only seven could complete their full five-year-tenure.

Justice S S Kothari had recently submitted the 32nd annual report to governor Kalyan Singh.

He said, out of the 9,119 petitions, including the backlog of 4,312 of the previous years, and 4,808 of the last year, the commission was able to dispose of 5,107 pleas. He said, during his tenure till February 2018, out of 23,982 complaints received, 23,754 were disposed of.

Disclosing the nature of the complaint last year, he said, the highest number of complaints were related to the revenue department (885) followed by the UDH/local bodies (860). The number of complaints against the police department was 814 while of the panchayat raj department was 755.