Govt unveils draft bill to fight bureaucratic graft

 The Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievance and Pensions unveiled the draft of the Citizen Right to Grievance Redress Bill 2011, a day after social activist Anna Hazare stepped up pressure on the Centre for early passage of the Lokpal Bill. The proposed legislation is being billed as one of the five lined up to lay a legal framework to fight corruption.

The bill seeks to cover all the schemes and departments of the Union government and provide a platform to state governments to implement similar mechanisms.

The draft bill makes it compulsory for every ministry and department of the Central government and each wing of the respective state governments to act within 15 days on complaints from the public, failing which an appeal could be filed with a higher authority that would have to dispose of the appeal within 30 days.

Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievance and Pensions V Narayanswamy said that draft of the proposed bill would be revised after receiving suggestions from all stakeholders and the final version would be sent to the Union Cabinet for approval. He also said that the government was keen to introduce the bill during Parliament’s winter session, which would commence on November 22 and continue till December 23.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said the bill was yet another milestone in the UPA government’s “approach to rights-based governance”, which was manifested in the landmark legislations enacted during its first tenure – the Right to Information Act, Right to Education Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

The Rural Development Ministry was roped in to draft the bill as it drew largely from the MGNREGA, provided for an inherent mechanism for social audit for implementation of the rural job guarantee scheme as well as for redressal of public grievances.

Ramesh said the UPA government had lined up a set of five proposed laws to fight the menace of corruption – the Lokpal Bill, 2011, the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection of Persons Making the Disclosure Bill, 2010 (commonly known as Whistleblowers’ Protection Bill), the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010, the Citizen Right to Grievance Redress Bill 2011 and the Transparency in Public Procurement Bill.

Hazare on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, saying that he would resume his fast on the last day of Parliament’s winter session if the Jan Lokpal bill was not passed by then.

Several versions

The Jan Lokpal bill is one of the several versions of the proposed legislation, which seeks to create an institution of ombudsman to probe alleged corruption by public functionaries.
The parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice is currently studying the Jan Lokpal bill, along with the version the government introduced in Parliament on August  4. One of the major objections of Team Anna on the government’s Lokpal bill was that it only sought to bring only the “Group A”’ officers, and not the officials and employees at lower level, under the purview of the ombudsman, which would be set up to probe allegations of corruptio­ns against public functionaries.

Ramesh and Narayanswamy said the Citizen Right to Grievance Redress Bill, 2011, would help fight corruption at the lower echelons of the bureaucratic hierarchy and ensure committed standards of public service and redressal of grievances in the stipulated time limit.