Rahul push to corruption laws

The government is considering using the ordinance route to bring in two key laws that will, along with the Lokpal Bill, round out the anti-corruption framework promised by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

Updated on: Jan 2, 2014, 18:28:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The government is considering using the ordinance route to bring in two key laws that will, along with the Lokpal Bill, round out the anti-corruption framework promised by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

Although the Parliament in winter session approved the Lokpal Bill, shortage of time meant that it failed to get to the Whistleblower Protection Bill and the Grievance Redressal and Timely Delivery of Services Bill, to the disappointment of citizen groups.

At a recent speech at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Rahul had highlighted that the Grievance Redressal Bill, and other legislations, were required to fight corruption as the Lokpal Bill alone would not be enough.

Sources said that the Department of Personnel and Training, which had piloted the two legislations, has been asked to work on the ordinance proposal.

“The issue has been discussed at the highest level and a formal decision will be announced soon,” a senior government functionary told HT.

Getting these two pieces of legislation into the lawbooks would be timely for the ruling party given the stir caused in Delhi by the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party, which won power on the back of its anti-corruption agenda. If it does opt for the ordinance mechanism, it is unlikely to witness much political opposition as all political parties are in favour of these pieces of legislation, which are operational in some states in different formats.

While the Lokpal is meant to address high-level corruption, the government intends the two new bills to deal with day-to-day corruption at the lower levels. The Grievance Redressal bill provides for a penalty to officials who fail to provide relief to citizens in a time-bound manner and the Whistleblower Protection Bill ensures legal protection for exposing corruption.

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.