NCPRI draft helps reconcile Team Anna, govt viewpoints

In resumed dialogue between the government and Team Anna, the National Campaign for People’s Right To Information (NCPRI)’s mechanism to fight corruption has helped in breaking the ice.

Updated on: Aug 25, 2011, 01:24:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In resumed dialogue between the government and Team Anna, the National Campaign for People’s Right To Information (NCPRI)’s mechanism to fight corruption has helped in breaking the ice.

The government on Tuesday took some clues from the NCPRI draft to strike a compromise with Team Anna on the contentious issues of including Prime Minister in the ambit of the Lokpal Bill and excluding judiciary.

The government ministers wanted that the Lokpal should initiate investigations against the PM only after a reference is made by a full bench of the Supreme Court, as suggested by NCPRI, government sources said.

The Jan Lokpal had a different take saying the investigation against the PM could start only after all 11 members of the Lokpal agree.

“The modalities can be worked out as the government has agreed to include the PM,” a Team Anna member said.

Another agreement between the government and Team Anna also came from NCPRI mechanism, which said that higher judiciary should be covered in the proposed judicial accountability law. “We want the judicial accountability law should be redrafted and strengthened,” team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal said, which is also a view-point of NCPRI.

Having a Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayukta at the state levels with similar powers as suggested both by Team Anna and NCPRI is an issue on which the Central government agrees but says it not in their domain area. “Constituting state Lokayuktas is jurisdiction of the state legislatives,” a government functionary said, terming it a reason for non-committal approach of the government on the issue.

“Certain areas we and team Anna had 90 % agreement. Now, the government has also agreed on those areas,” a NCPRI member said.

On two contentious other issues with the government --- include all employees and citizen charters to make officials accountable under Lokpal --- are where Team Anna and NCPRI differ.

The NCPRI believes that Lokpal should look at corruption at higher levels and there should be a separate mechanism to deal with corruption and public grievance at the middle and lower levels of bureaucracy. It wants public grievances to be dealt by Public Grievance Lokpal and middle level bureaucracy by Central Vigilance Commission and State Vigilance Commissions.

Team Anna wants the Lokpal to deal from peon to Prime Minister saying one authority can deal with corruption in a much better way than multiple authorities.

“Jan Lokpal approach on covering all public servants will make Lokpal unwieldy,” NAC member Aruna Roy said. Roy on Wednesday with other members of the NCPRI team had met Anna Hazare and inquired about his health. “There was no discussion on the ongoing debate,” Roy said.

Since the NCPRI released its anti-corruption mechanism, the campaign has been in touch with some members of Team Anna in a bid to find a common ground for the civil society to fight to strong ant-corruption mechanism.

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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