"Accountability of anti-corruption institutions is as important as the accountability they seek to enforce." Comment.

Anti-corruption bodies exercise coercive powers — search, seizure, prosecution sanction — under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 [1]. Institutions that police probity must themselves be answerable, since unaccountable watchdogs erode the very trust they are built to protect. The statement is therefore largely valid, though internal accountability must not become executive control.

Why watchdog accountability matters

• Institutional decay goes unnoticed: in July 2026 the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court directed the Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary to constitute a Chief Secretary-headed committee to review the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC), citing recurring institutional deficiencies and "deep-rooted corruption in the system" [2]. A six-decade-old agency (DVAC, 1964) [3] needed judicial prompting to be reviewed.
• Selective enforcement risk: agencies under the state's own Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department [3] investigate the same executive, creating a conflict of interest.
• Ethical logic: the 2nd ARC's Ethics in Governance report grounds anti-corruption reform in institutional integrity, not merely stronger penalties [4].
• Capacity is accountability: the Court's review heads — capacity, investigation quality, preventive vigilance, technology, public interface [2] — show accountability means performance, not only misconduct.

The necessary caveat

• Excessive oversight can become political leverage; hence layered, non-executive checks — the Central Vigilance Commission, the statutory apex integrity body with superintendence over the CBI [5], and the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 ombudsman architecture [6].
• Judicial review under Article 226, as in the DVAC order, supplies correction without displacing investigative independence [2].

Accountability of the enforcer and of the enforced are thus complementary, not competing. The way forward lies in time-bound institutional audits, transparent conviction and pendency data, secure tenure for agency heads, and reporting to an independent Vigilance Commission rather than the parent department. Watchdogs that answer to the law, not to the executive, best serve constitutional probity in public life.