Whistleblower’s Protection Act 2011, India: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

Corruption, which today has become a plague ruining the economical and ethical environment at the industrial level in India, often goes unchallenged when people are frightened to raise voice about it. Initiations to a committed Whistleblower Policy will provide an invaluableinsight intocorruption.From exposing high profile scandals to financial scam, whistleblowers play a critical role in saving both resources and lives. Timely disclosure of wrongdoing can also helpto protect human rights.But today, in our country blowing the whistle can result into high personal risk becausein the current state there is no legal procedure against an unauthorized expulsion, humiliation or even physical abuse related to whistleblowing conduct. Whistleblowers often face retaliation, from the group or organization which they have accused, and sometimes under the law.Whistleblower Act will provide a safeguard which will help people to speak about corruption. We must importune our country to introduce the policy to protect those whospeak out and ensure that their claims are properly investigated in whistleblower policy. This paper analyses the serious issue related to the current conduct of whistleblowing and whistleblowers protection in India, which is still in its way to become a country wide actto be enforced on the public and private sector companies. It examines the consequences of inexistence of a formal whistleblower policy and contains recommendations for formulating such kind of policy.The purpose of the study is first to identify common shortcomings in the regional legislations; second aim is to recognize the most important barriers that obstruct public interest disclosures; and third, to devote to more successful whistleblower protection by highlighting favourable and effective practices.

 

Keywords-Whistleblower, Central Whistleblower council,Protected Disclosure,Reprisal,victimization, Identity Protection, Anonymous Complaints.
Roadmap: This research paper begins with a high-level introduction about whistleblowing in Section 1. Section 2 speaks about the consequences of lacking a formal model for whistleblower’s protection. A brief description of related work is given in Section 3 and analysis of current scenario has been done in Section 4. In section 5 we have given recommendations for forming a Whistleblower’s act. We have concluded in Section 6.