Aruna Roy blames govt for Anna mess

Aruna Roy welcomes the govt's move to build "national consensus" on Lokpal Bill but blames it of mishandling Anna Hazare's campaign. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Aug 25, 2011, 23:47:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Social activist and National Advisory Council (NAC) member Aruna Roy has welcomed the government's move to build a “national consensus” through Parliament for a strong anti-corruption and grievance redress mechanism. But she blamed the government of mishandling Anna Hazare's campaign.

“Setting up arbitrary conditions, such as limited number of days and protesters before letting Hazare to proceed, and subsequently arresting him when he refused to comply, were anti-democratic actions by the government," Roy told Hindustan Times in an interview. “The vilification campaign against the Bhushans and Hazare was also misconceived,” she added.

Roy's group, the National Campaign for People's Right To Information (NCPRI), has come out with an anti-corruption mechanism, including a Lokpal for the Centre and Lokayuktas for states. This proposal has provided a common ground between Hazare's Jan Lokpal bill and the government's Lokpal bill.

With the government on Thursday announcing to consider views from different civil society groups, Roy suggested that the government should show "magnanimity and vision" by addressing concerns of all. Then she asked Hazare to end his fast so that discussions can continue without pressure on his "life" and "safety".

There is a lot on the government's platter to form a strong framework to deal with corruption at all levels. Roy believes that there is convergence on all objectives between Hazare's version of Lokpal and NCPRI's mechanism.

"Both formulations (Jan Lokpal and NCPRI's version) seek to ensure that nobody is above the law. The only difference is that the Jan Lokpal seeks to do it under one institution, whereas the NCPRI formulation breaks it into four different institutions and a separate legislation for protection of whistle-blowers," Roy said.

Another member of her team, Nihkil De, said they want to deal with petty corruption in a much bigger way than the Jan Lokpal bill envisaged. De suggested a separate law for effective and stronger action against officials who harass citizens. However, the Jan Lokpal bill mentions dealing with petty corruption through institutionalising citizen charters under Lokpal.

Asking Hazare to end his fast, former Chief Justice of India JS Verma said there is no justification at least now for the continuance of the fast after the Prime Minister’s statement in Parliament. “I would advise the members of his team to persuade to do so without any delay,” he said. Team Anna member Santosh Hedge asked Hazare to end fast and suggested that the campaign can continue.

Other civil society members also welcomed the likely truce between the government and Hazare.

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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