NDA (II) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 130 of 146

Correct — A, the Santhanam Committee. The Central Vigilance Commission was set up by a Government of India Resolution on 11 February 1964, acting on the recommendations of the Committee on Prevention of Corruption chaired by K. Santhanam. That committee had been asked to examine how corruption in the central services could be checked, and its central proposal was an apex body standing outside the executive departments it was meant to watch. The Commission ran on that resolution alone for nearly four decades, gaining statutory backing only through the Central Vigilance Commission Act of 2003.

• (b)Dinesh Goswami Committee — The Dinesh Goswami Committee of 1990 dealt with electoral reforms — it is remembered, among other things, for proposing that the ceiling on election expenditure be laid down by the Election Commission rather than by the Central Government. It also sits twenty-six years after the Commission was already working.
• (c)Tarkunde Committee — The name belongs to V. M. Tarkunde, a Bombay High Court judge from 1957 to 1969 who became the leading figure of India's civil liberties movement. The committee bearing his name comes from the mid-1970s, a decade after the Commission was set up, so the chronology alone rules it out.
• (d)Narasimham Committee — The Narasimham Committees, chaired by former RBI Governor M. Narasimham, belong to banking and financial-sector reform — the first reported in November 1991, the second in April 1998. Both are decades too late and in a different policy field entirely.

The Central Vigilance Commission is the apex integrity watchdog for the central government. It exercises superintendence over the vigilance administration of central ministries and public sector undertakings, and over the Delhi Special Police Establishment — that is, the CBI — in corruption cases. It is an advisory body rather than a prosecuting one: it inquires and recommends, while the disciplinary authority in the department decides. It is a multi-member body headed by the Central Vigilance Commissioner, appointed by the President on the recommendation of a committee that includes the Prime Minister, the Union Home Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

Committee-name questions are pure recall, but they can usually be cracked by dating. The Commission dates from 1964, so any committee that belongs to the 1970s, 1990s or later cannot have recommended it — and that single move eliminates Dinesh Goswami, Tarkunde and Narasimham together. It is also worth fixing that the Commission is a statutory body, not a constitutional one; it got its statute only in 2003, after the Supreme Court in the Vineet Narain case pressed for the vigilance machinery to be given legal insulation from political control.

• The Central Vigilance Commission was set up by a Government of India Resolution on 11 February 1964.
• It followed the recommendations of the Committee on Prevention of Corruption headed by K. Santhanam.
• Parliament conferred statutory status on the Commission in 2003.
• It is a statutory body, not a constitutional one, and it advises rather than prosecutes.

• Calling the Commission a constitutional body; it began as an executive resolution and became statutory only in 2003.
• Attributing the Lokpal proposal to the Santhanam Committee — that recommendation came from the first Administrative Reforms Commission.
• Confusing the two Narasimham Committees on banking with anything to do with vigilance.

Asked as a committee-to-institution recall item, solvable by dating the institution against each committee.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Central Vigilance Commission acquired statutory status in the year

  • (a)1964
  • (b)1988
  • (c)2003
  • (d)2013

  Answer(c) 2003 — Parliament passed the Central Vigilance Commission Act that year; the body itself had existed since 1964 on an executive resolution.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Narasimham Committees of 1991 and 1998 dealt with reform of

  • (a)the electoral system
  • (b)the banking and financial sector
  • (c)centre-state relations
  • (d)the civil services

  Answer(b) the banking and financial sector — chaired by M. Narasimham, a former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.