New Delhi, May 30 (IANS) A meeting between ministers and civil society leaders on the Lokpal Bill ended Monday on a bitter note, with activists accusing the government of not being serious about fighting corruption.
An update later posted by the civil society members of the joint drafting committee on the website of India Against Corruption, said the government’s intentions were suspect and people should be prepared to taking to the streets.
After a three-hour meeting of the 10-member drafting committee, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal gave guarded reactions but anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal tore into the government.
Kejriwal said it was unacceptable that the government now wanted the prime minister, judiciary, MPs as well as officers below the rank of joint secretaries out of the purview of the proposed Lokpal.
He wanted to know if this official proposal — which came as a jolt to Gandhian Anna Hazare and his team — enjoyed the backing of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
‘We request the prime minister and (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi to say whether this is the official stand of the government or just the stand of these five ministers?’ a furious Kejriwal asked on TimesNow.
He added: ‘We are not ready for a weak Lokpal bill. This country is not ready for a weak Lokpal bill.’
Sibal tried to underplay the differences at the meeting by saying that the government was ‘constructively looking at issues of divergence’.
He agreed that corruption concerned everyone and people wanted a strong law to battle it. He also said that the government too wanted an effective mechanism to battle graft.
At the same time, Sibal said any Lokpal bill had to be in conformity with the provisions of the constitution and that the government needed to discuss certain issues with states and political parties.
The government representatives at the meeting were cabinet ministers Pranab Mukherjee, P. Chidambaram, M. Veerappa Moily, Salman Khurshid and Sibal.
The ministers argued the Lokpal bill would not cover MPs charged with taking bribes to ask questions in parliament.
Civil society activists said it was not fair to bring only about 2,000 senior bureaucrats within the purview of the Lokpal bill while saying that no one below the rank of joint secretary could be probed.
Kejriwal said he and his colleagues were also against the government’s idea of not giving autonomy to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).
‘We found the response of the government not very reasonable,’ said Prashant Bhushan, one of the four people who assisted Anna Hazare at the meeting. ‘We are a bit disappointed.’
The government argued that a probe against the prime minister could render the post ‘dysfunctional’.
Bhushan said they could never agree to government suggestions that the conduct of MPs should be left to self regulation. He countered: ‘It’s best left to Lokpal.’
Kejriwal said they would not compromise on the issue of the prime minister’s office and judiciary coming within the ambit of the Lokpal but quickly added that Manmohan Singh was a honest man.
Monday’s meeting was the fifth between the government and civil society representatives. The next meetings are scheduled for June 6 and 10.
The government agreed to form a 10-member team to draft the proposed Lokpal Bill after a hunger strike by Anna Hazare here in April evoked mass protests across the country.
The update about Monday’s joint committee meeting termed it as ‘quite disastrous’. It said the government disagreed on almost everything.
It said the meeting started with Hazare demanding more frequent meetings as progress had been slow on the bill.
The update said government’s own draft of Lokpal talked of keeping the prime minister in the ambit of the bill with some conditions but said the ministers at the meeting were not even prepared to concede that.
On the judiciary, the update said the members reminded the government that only the chief justice of India has the power to give permission and despite evidence against so many judges in public domain, permission had been given only in one case in the last 20 years.
‘We will try our best, till the last moment, to persuade the government to agree to a strong and effective Lokpal Bill. But if the government disagrees, we should be ready for taking to streets,’ the update said.
