by NEENA VYAS and VIDYA SUBRAHMANIAM
Congress negotiators and Anna Hazare’s associates repeatedly shifted the goalposts through the four-and-half-month stand-off on the shape and structure of the Lokpal Bill.
The Anna group flagged as many as 40 issues during the many rounds of discussions in the joint Lokpal drafting committee set up after Mr. Hazare ended his April 2011 fast in Jantar Mantar here. Of these, 34 were more or less resolved by the time negotiations broke off in July.
This left six sticking points. Anna’s side wanted the following under the Lokpal:
The incumbent Prime Minister; the judiciary; the lower as well as upper echelons of the bureaucracy; actions and conduct of MPs within the two Houses of Parliament and a citizens’ charter for time-bound delivery of services. It also wanted the Lokpal Bill to provide for setting up of Lokayuktas at the State level.
The government outwardly appeared intractable on the inclusion of the Prime Minister. Indeed, its Bill exempted the incumbent Prime Minister from scrutiny. And yet, government negotiators had privately told Mr. Hazare’s team that they were open to the inclusion of Prime Minister and this aspect could be seriously examined by the Standing Committee looking at the Lokpal Bill. Political parties and others favouring inclusion of the Prime Minister could place their views before the Committee.
However, on judicial corruption, the political class was unanimous that it could not come under the Lokpal, as doing so would compromise the independence of one vital pillar of democracy. The political consensus favoured addressing judicial corruption separately through a fortified Judicial Accountability Bill. This left little elbow room for Team Anna, which reluctantly agreed to drop the demand, only insisting that the Judicial Accountability Bill be passed simultaneously with the Lokpal Bill.
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(Thanks to Mukul Dube)