Changes have made Lokpal Bill 'unwieldy'

Large scale changes made in the original anti-graft Lokpal Bill to accommodate the demands of the civil society and different political parties may have led to certain major inconsistency in it, the government has conceded.

Large scale changes made in the original anti-graft Lokpal Bill to accommodate the demands of the civil society and different political parties may have led to certain major inconsistency in it, the government has conceded.

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This has been revealed by the top government officials from the ministries of personnel and law before the Rajya Sabha select panel, which is currently examining the highly contentious bill.

"The history of the bill has been such. Civil society has been very proactive in this case. The bill was drafted in a particular way. Then it underwent certain changes in the Lok Sabha. The issue now is about the constitutional validity of this proposed law," PK Misra, secretary, Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), informed the panel.

Asked whether the government had carried out any preliminary exercise to assess the manpower and infrastructure required to set-up the anti-graft watchdog, senior officials from the two key ministries replied in the negative.

"As of now, there is no assessment about the number of staff required…The total number of employees in all vigilance organisations across the country is around 50,000," one of the officials said.

The government has conceded that the idea of a lokpal, which would have jurisdiction on all categories of government employees and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), "may become unwieldy."

Questioned about the differences in definitions of Code for Criminal Procedure and Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), in the provisions related to granting sanction to prosecute public servants, the government conceded "it was an anomaly which crept in due to wrong wording".

On the issue of whether Parliament has the power to pass a law — either making it mandatory for the states to have lokayuktas or have a model bill through the single lokpal legislation to be passed by Parliament — the government said it has decided to leave the matter on the wisdom of Parliament.