Dissent in Team Anna

Cracks appeared in Team Anna with two key members, Swami Agnivesh and former Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hedge, accusing a coterie around Anna Hazare of preventing him from ending his fast.

Updated on: Aug 27, 2011, 24:02:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Cracks appeared in Team Anna with two key members, Swami Agnivesh and former Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hedge, accusing a coterie around Anna Hazare of preventing him from ending his fast.

Although the signs of dissent appeared soon after Team Anna started negotiations with the government, it came out in open in the last two days with both of them castigating Team Anna for insisting their way in the Parliament.

They wanted Hazare to end his fast as he had made his point "strongly" and effectively but others in Team Anna refused to budge. And, there was a feeling that people with extreme views have taken over the campaign.

Team Anna termed their claims as false and said Hazare rejected their attempt to be part of the negotiating team. "Annaji decided that we three (Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Prashant Bhushan) will talk with the government," he said.

"I feel I am not in team Anna any more by the way things are going. These (telling Parliament what to do) are not democratic things" Hedge, who was team Anna's representative in the joint drafting committee for the Lokpal Bill, said.

Swami Agnivesh, another key member, stuck a similar note when he said: "There is no reason for Anna Hazare to continue his fast. They lost a golden opportunity when the Prime Minister Parliament appeal. They didn't end the fast."

When Prime Minister made an appeal to Anna Hazare on Wednesday to end his fast, Agnivesh wanted Hazare to end his fast. But, apparently some other members resisted saying the "golden opportunity" would be missed to pressurize the government to accept their Jan Lokpal bill.

Agnivesh resisted and said that was not the motive behind the entire campaign. "The initial plan did not include dictating to Parliament under what sections or what rules the bill should be discussed," the social activist said.

Making it clear that decisions in team Anna were not of consensus anymore, Agnivesh said he does not know who were deciding on the new conditions. But, pointed the finger at Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi saying that everybody knows who is running the campaign now.

Hedge, who was not as critical of Team Anna as Agnivesh, said nobody can justify giving command to the Parliament. "I have been a judge and I believe in certain democratic principles," was what Hedge had to say even though he had claimed that he will sit on fast with Hazare once he retired as Lokayukta of Karnataka, which he did on August 2.

What had apparently irked him was reluctance on part of key team Anna members to listen to his "moderate" views. He wants that the campaign against corruption should continue but Hazare should immediately end his fast. "We cannot lose a Gandhian like Hazare," he said.

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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