Civil society unites in war on graft

Moved by popular support to Anna Hazare, the NCPRI, which has suggested alternate anti-corruption mechanism has decided to converge with team Anna on two of the three sticking points with the government. Chetan Chauhan reports. NCPRI's approach: Doc 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Updated on: Aug 27, 2011, 01:10:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Moved by popular support to Anna Hazare, the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), which has suggested alternate anti-corruption mechanism has decided to converge with team Anna on two of the three sticking points with the government.

The three issues are covering entire bureaucracy under Lokpal, a citizen charter providing penalty on officials who fail to deliver services within stipulated time-lines and equally powerful state Lokayuktas. The move is aimed at putting additional pressure on the government to implement an effective mechanism to combat corruption.

“The NCPRI is completely in agreement that all three objectives put forth by team Anna should be addressed immediately,” the campaign said on Friday, an hour before Gandhi hinted that their mechanism was one of the best to fight corruption. Where they differed with Team Anna was on mechanism on implementation of citizen charters.

The convergence lead to nuanced change in NCPRI's position after a day-long meeting of National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy with other members of the group such as NAC member Harsh Mander, Shekhar Singh and Nikhil Dey.

One big change in their original mechanism, also called Roy’s draft, was the group agreeing that entire bureaucracy can be brought under the Lokpal by putting Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) under the administrative control of Lokpal. Earlier, NCPRI has suggested independent CVC to deal with middle and lower level bureaucracy. NCPRI's approach on Lokpal:Covering note

It means that officials above the level of group A officials should be directly dealt by Lokpal and rest by the CVC. Team Anna wants entire bureaucracy under Lokpal, which NCPRI opposed saying it would distract the Lokpal from its primary task of combating high level corruption. NCPRI's approach on Lokpal: Amendments suggested to Govt's version

Team Anna and NCPRI had also converged on the issue of having one law to set up Lokpal and state Lokayuktas. Till now, the team Anna had wanted one law whereas NCPRI had suggested that a Central law for Lokpal and state government laws for Lokayuktas. “The Parliament is competent to legislate on this but the states should be consulted on this on an urgent basis,” said NCPRI co-convener Nikhil Dey. NCPRI's approach on Lokpal: On public servants

While team Anna and Roy’s team agrees that grievance redress is most critical, there is some difference on how to deal with it. Team Anna wants Lokpal at the central level and Lokayukta at the states to deal with petty corruption through citizen charters whereas Roy believes that setting up a separate institutional framework to deal with issues of grievance redress in all social sector areas. NCPRI's approach on Lokpal: On Standards and Accountability Bill

A team Anna member, however, said they were not totally opposed to NCPRI’s framework but want that institutional framework to be accountable to Lokpal or Lokayukta, rather than to the government. “The entire purpose of district grievance redress committee will be lost if it is set up under a district level official because most people will have complaints against district administration,” Arvind Kejriwal explained. NCPRI's approach on Lokpal: On grievance redress commission | On whislteblower

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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