Shanti Bhushan wants speed up of Lokpal Bill proceedings

Shanti Bhushan, civil society member and co-chair of the Lokpan drafting committee, has asked panel chairman and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to speed up the proceedings if the June 30 deadline for drafting the Lokpal Bill is to be met.

Giving a set of four suggestions on how this can be done, Bhushan in a letter to Mukherjee has said that in June, the committee should meet at least thrice a week “if not on a daily basis”.

“The progress so far has been slow. I, as co-chairperson am worried whether we will be able to meet our deadline,” Bhushan said in the letter. He has suggested that in the next meeting on May 23, the government should first present its views on the “basic principles of Jan Lokpal Bill” so that differences between the government and the civil society members can be sorted out within the least possible time. In the May 2 meeting, home minister P Chidambaram had already listed out which of these points were acceptable to the government.

“On those points where government has concerns, let the government present its concerns. What are the possible solutions from government’s point of view on each of these points? Does the government wish to add any points to the basic principles presented by us? Once these are presented, we can go ahead with discussions on issues of divergence,” the letter said.

Bhushan has also reiterated the demand for the video-recording of the proceedings and said that the recordings should be released to the public after the legislation has been finally drafted.

In a separate statement addressed to the public, Bhushan, with reference to the two contradictory CFSL reports about the CD of his purported conversation with SP leader  Mulayam Singh Yadav  and his former aide Amar Singh, alleged that for the last four decades, “the Congress has been systematically compromising every independent institution in the country and making them the handmaidens of the Congress party to suit its interests”. He said that as his appeals to the Prime Minister, home minister and the Delhi Police for a copy of the report of CFSL Chandigarh having fallen on deaf ears, he has decided to appeal to the people instead.

Raising serious doubts about the integrity of CFSL (CBI) Delhi, the former law minister said: “Since the director of CFSL (CBI) Delhi is an ad-hoc appointee whose confirmation as director is yet to be decided by the appointment committee, which has both the Prime Minister and the home minister on it, it was easy for influential Congress leaders to pressure it to do an unpardonable job of declaring the CD, which was an obvious fabrication, to be an authentic one.” While giving a clean chit to the Prime Minister, calling him “very honest and well-meaning”, he declared his intention not to write to him but to only raise these issues in the “people’s court”.

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