Bangalore, April 22 (IANS) Scores of people, including leaders of Congress and Janata Dal-Secular, Friday pleaded with Karnataka Lokayukta N. Santosh Hegde not to quit the Lokpal Bill drafting panel over Congress leader Digvijay Singh’s attack on him.
‘I think he should continue in the panel,’ leader of opposition in the assembly Siddaramiah of Congress told reporters here on Hegde’s plan to quit in view of ‘malicious vilification campaign’ against civil society members of the panel.
‘You should not get disheartened by these attacks and should not quit the panel for any reason,’ JD-S state president and former Karnataka chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy pleaded while talking to reporters here.
Hegde also came under pressure from the public to stay on in the panel, which is mandated to draft the Lokpal bill aimed at curbing corruption at the national level.
Hegde told reporters that he would announce his decision in New Delhi Saturday after talking to other civil society members on the panel, which also has five central ministers.
Carrying placards reading ‘We are with you’, ‘Please do not quit the panel’, and ‘India against corruption’, around 100 people, many of them senior citizens, met Hegde at his residence in upscale Sadashivanagar locality in north Bangalore to express support for him.
Hegde, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, told them that he would not act in haste and only announce his decision Saturday.
Besides Hegde, the other four members are Gandhian Anna Hazare, social activist Arvind Kejrival and leading lawyers Shanti Bhushan and his son Prashant Bhushan.
The group members told reporters that Hegde had informed them he had not taken any decision and would consult other civil society members on the panel before finalizing his stand.
The Bhushans are caught in a CD controversy and also over alleged preferential land allotment to them in Uttar Pradesh.
Hegde said Thursday he was thinking of quitting the panel, upset at the ‘malicious vilification campaign’ against him.
Digvijay Singh, a former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and now a Congress general secretary, Thursday questioned what Hegde had done to curb corruption in Karnataka.
This is the second time in a month that Hegde has come under attack from senior Congress leaders.
Central Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily had said March 19 that Hegde ‘starts a probe but does not complete it’ and that ‘his actions against corruption are superficial’.
The next day an angry Hegde ticked him off saying ‘I don’t need a certificate from Veerappa Moily. It is enough if I get a certificate from the people of Karnataka’.
Like Digvijay Singh ‘clarifying’ his remarks, Moily too had written a letter to Hegde hoping that media reports would not spoil their long and cordial relationship.
