Historic joint exercise to draft Lokpal Bill kicks off

No videotaping, govt agrees to keep audio records of meetings

They ended up fixing May 2 as the date of the next meeting. It resolved to have the audios of their parleys recorded, in addition to deciding that all available drafts of the Lokpal Bill, including the one prepared by the civil society activists, would be studied before making the final version of the legislation, which would be introduced by the government in Parliament during the monsoon session.

“It is a historic occasion. We held discussions in a cordial atmosphere. The government is committed to introducing a strong Lokpal Bill in Parliament during the monsoon session,” said Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal.

The first meeting of the joint drafting committee was held a week after Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare’s fast-unto-death stir forced the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government to constitute it for preparing a new draft of the proposed legislation to set up an independent and empowered institution to check corruption.

“It went off well,” Hazare said after the meeting, which was held amid war of words between the ruling Congress and the leaders of the civil society movement for the Lokpal Bill.

Hazare himself was present at the meeting of the committee, which is jointly chaired by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan.

Shanti Bhushan explained the salient features of the Jan Lokpal Bill. Though the civil society activists insisted that the proceedings of the panel’s meetings should be video-recorded and telecast to ensure transparency, the government agreed for only audio recording.

Sibal said the proceedings of the meeting on Saturday were also audio recorded. He said the representatives of the government and civil society would brief the media after every meeting and make people aware of the progresses made by the committee in drafting the Lokpal Bill. The meeting on Saturday took place amid a controversy over a CD, which has been anonymously sent to media organisations’ offices in the past few days and which purportedly contains unauthenticated tapes of conversations between Shanti Bhushan and Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav over “fixing” of a judge in connection with a case. Bhushans termed the CD fabricated and an attempt to malign them.

They also lodged complaints with the Delhi Police, seeking probe into the source of the CD.

Prashant Bhushan, however, said that the issue of the “fake” CD was not raised in the meeting on Saturday.

The other representatives of the government—Sibal, Home Minister P Chidambaram, Law Minister M Veerappa Moily and Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid—were present along with civil society representatives consisting of eminent lawyer Prashant Bhushan, son of Shanti Bhushan, Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hegde and social activist Arvind Kejriwal.

“It has been accepted by all that a very strong, effective and independent Lokpal is the need of the hour for this country and a bill is very necessary because it is the requirement of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which India has signed and is currently in the process of ratifying it,” said Prashant.

He said the panel resolved to have wider public consultations on the draft Lokpal Bill and modalities for it would be decided in the next meeting on May 2.

“The basic principle of the Lokpal Bill would be discussed in the next meeting. We will meet more frequently after the next meeting, perhaps once or more in a week.”

Shanti Bhushan on Saturday formally presented to the committee a version of the proposed legislation, which has been drafted by the veteran legal expert himself and known and debated in the public domain as “Jan Lokpal Bill.”

Shanti Bhushan, however, made a change in the draft, replacing Lok Sabha Speaker and Rajya Sabha chairman with prime minister and leader of Opposition as the members of the panel that would select the Lokpal.