Mumbai, Dec 28 (IANS) Terming the Lokpal Bill passed by the Lok Sabha as ‘a threat to democracy’, a key member of Team Anna said here Wednesday that it would not serve any real purpose.
Bitterly criticising the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, India Against Corruption founder Arvind Kejriwal alleged that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government had ‘completely betrayed Anna Hazare, his team and people of the country’.
‘We have completely rejected this bill which has been passed. It is a threat to democracy,’ Kejriwal told reporters in the evening as Hazare announced the end of his one-and-half-day-long hunger strike in Mumbai.
Kejriwal also questioned why the country’s armed forces were being kept out of the purview of the Lokpal Bill.
Targeting the Congress, Kejriwal said: ‘Democracy is of the people, by the people, for the people. But with these developments, it is clear that it is ‘of the party high command, by the party high command, and for the party high command’. The people’s representatives have become bonded labour of their respective party high commands.’
Kejriwal also labelled the party high command as ‘dictatorships’ and said that such structures needed to be challenged. ‘We shall definitely ask these questions from them (the public representatives),’ he said.
He said: ‘The Lokpal Bill is not of parliament, but of the UPA, the ruling party. There are 55 opposition parties and there were 55 amendments proposed to the bill. However, only the amendments of the ruling party were discussed. It seems we are back to square one.’
Kejriwal claimed that the Lokpal Bill, in the form it has been passed, would cover barely 300,000 of the estimated six million government employees.
‘Our fight is not limited only for an effective Lokpal, but also for a real and effective democracy,’ he said.
He said that under the present form of the bill, the government would continue to exercise its control over the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
