Team Hazare to get a rival draft
Team Anna’s Lokpal draft would soon have a rival from another section of civil society and could be more accommodating for the government. Chetan Chauhan reports.
Team Hazare’s draft lokpal bill will soon have a rival. Another section of civil society is preparing a draft bill that could be more acceptable to the government.
The National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) — an umbrella body of RTI activists, including Team Hazare’s Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan — will come up with a comprehensive package on tackling graft, including a draft lokpal bill.
Kejriwal and Bhushan, who are on the joint panel drafting the lokpal bill with the government, are not on the NCPRI drafting committee.
"A sub-group is finalising a draft with other measures to deal with corruption,” said Venkatesh Nayak, NCPRI co-convener. He said it was difficult to agree with everything Anna Hazare’s team has been demanding.
The NCPRI fully agrees that the prime minister and cabinet ministers should be brought under the ambit of the lokpal and chief ministers, MPs, MLAs and councillors under the lokayuktas. But it disagrees with Team Hazare on the lokpal being made an overarching body with powers to investigate corruption allegations against the higher judiciary and civil servants.
It believes concentration of too much power in one institution could make it corrupt.