A year after the government directed all central ministries to disclose their minister’s discretionary powers and frame guidelines to regulate them, the order has not been complied by 66 of 84 department/ministries, including ministries of railways, defence, and environment. 

The department of personnel and training (DoPT) had issued the order on April 16 last year after it accepted a group of minister’s recommendations on ways to tackle corruption.

With its order not implemented, the DoPT sent another circular on July 13 this year, asking the errant ministries to come up with guidelines at the earliest.  

“All ministries/departments were requested for putting in place regulatory parameters for exercise of discretionary powers of ministers and putting them in public domain so as to minimize arbitrariness in exercise of such powers and to send a copy of the guidelines. However, no reply/information have been received from your ministry/department so far,” the July circular, issued to the defaulting ministries, noted.

The misuse of discretionary powers by ministers have long been considered an important cause of corruption and there have been calls for scraping these powers, which includes, among others, allotment of gas pumps, gas coupons, quota for admission of students from Bhutan and Nepal to medical college, appointment of non-functional directors of banks, chairman to PSUs, samitis, NGOs, cooperatives, boards, etc.

An example of misuse of such powers came to light during the investigation of the railway appointment scam involving Vijay Singla, the nephew of former railway minister Pawan Bansal. 

According to the CBI, which is investigating the case, Rahul Bhandari, the private secretary of Bansal and Vijay Singla and prime accused in the case, charged a fixed amount as commission on each of the 2,000 of 12,000 tickets set aside every day under the discretionary quota of the railway minister.
Earlier, in 2011, the urban development minister in the Odisha government was accused of offering flats and land parcels to sitting and former judges as well as IPS officers and bureaucrats at concessional rates by using the minister's discretionary quota. 

The same year, the government formed a group of ministers (GoM) to deliberate on the arbitrary use of discretionary powers and come out with ways to tackle the misuse of these powers by ministers. One of the terms of reference (TOR) of the GoM was to consider and advise on "Relinquishing discretionary powers enjoyed by ministers at the centre”.

The GoM recommended that all ministries/departments should frame regulatory guidelines for exercise of discretionary powers and putting them in public domain to minimise arbitrariness in exercise of such powers.