Anna's men decide to stay put despite pressure

The civil society members of the joint Lokpal Bill drafting committee dug their heels on Saturday, deciding that none of them, including co-chair of the committee Shanti Bhushan, would quit despite allegations of impropriety.

Updated on: Apr 24, 2011, 24:11:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The civil society members of the joint Lokpal Bill drafting committee dug their heels on Saturday, deciding that none of them, including co-chair of the committee Shanti Bhushan, would quit despite allegations of impropriety.

"We will write to the Prime Minister and the chief justice of the Supreme Court for an independent inquiry on Monday," said rights activist and member of the committee Arvind Kejriwal.

Former IPS officer and social activist Kiran Bedi said, "It is a fight between honest and dishonest people."

Kejriwal described the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) report on the authenticity of the CD on Bhushan as a ghost that no one has seen so far.

"For us, it (the CFSL report) does not exist. If you have the report please give it so us," he told media persons.

The CD contains a conversation between Shanti Bhushan, former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, where Bhushan allegedly offered to influence a high court judge for Rs 4 crore.

Earlier, water resources minister and a government member of the committee, Salman Khurshid, said the committee was entrusted with drafting the Lokpal Bill.

"Let us examine the Bill on its merit, rather than discussing the characters of people."

Kejriwal also made it clear that activist Anna Hazara's comment that ministers should resign immediately after corruption charges are levelled against them cannot apply in case of Bhushan.

"You cannot compare a government minister, an elected representative, with a civil society member," he said after a meeting with the other members of the drafting committee.

On having a Dalit as member of the committee - as demanded by UP chief minister Mayawati and Congress leader Digvijaya Singh - he said the government could nominate a Dalit minister as member of the committee.

The members unanimously decided that Santosh Hedge, Karnataka Lokayukta, who had threatened to resign after Singh questioned his integrity, would stay in the committee.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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