Gloves are off: Govt snubs Team Anna,says will draft Bill without you too

The co-chair of the joint committee,Shanti Bhushan,had even demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet on the police action on Ramdev who had organised a fast on the issue of black money.

The five ministers on the joint committee went ahead with today’s meeting in the absence of civil society representatives. An assertive Kapil Sibal,one of the five ministers on the panel,later told reporters that Hazare and his colleagues were not “serious” about drafting the Lokpal bill and criticised the language they had used against the government.

“I reject in the strongest possible terms the language used by Anna Hazare and others which I must say was not the language of civil society. They have called the government cheats,liars,conspirators. I can only hope such kind of language will not be used in the future,” he said.

“Letter writing,asking us to participate in public debates or raising the issue of Ramdev or televised discussions at the meeting are all extraneous to the proceedings of the joint drafting committee. Its mandate is to draft a Lokpal Bill. The government has always cooperated with the demands raised by the civil society,” Sibal said.

Just hours earlier,the Congress party had also attacked Anna Hazare,equating him with Ramdev,and describing both of them as “mukhautas” (masks) of the RSS.

Sibal made it clear that the government will go ahead with the drafting of the Lokpal even if the civil society representatives refused to participate in future meetings as well. “The government is working in all seriousness to complete the drafting exercise by June 30,as promised. We have already finalised several provisions of the proposed legislation. I hope and pray that the civil society also shows the same kind of seriousness,” he said.

The ten-member joint drafting committee was formed on the insistence of Anna Hazare who had gone on a fast unto death in Delhi in April on this demand. Before today’s meeting,the committee had met on three earlier occasions.

Besides being a protest against the police action on Ramdev,Hazare’s group had decided to boycott today’s meeting because they wanted the government to make its stand public on certain contentious provisions in the proposed legislation,like whether the Prime Minister and the higher judiciary needed to be brought under the purview of the office of Lokpal. Shanti Bhushan had written a letter to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee,the other co-chair,asking the government to spell out its stand on these issues.

Reacting to the government’s remarks,Hazare’s colleague Arvind Kejriwal,one of the members of the committee,denied the use of “unparliamentary” language against the government.

“We have always been very proper and correct in our communication with the government. After what the government has said today,we have decided to call a meeting tomorrow to discuss what our future course of action should be,” he said.