New Delhi: Samajwadi Party said it will strongly oppose the Lokpal Bill in Parliament, holding it was against the very basis of democracy.
We are strongly opposed to the very concept of Lokpal. People who are elected by the people in elections are dishonest and only the Lokpal is honest. This is against the very basis of democracy, SP leader Naresh Agrawal told reporters here.
He was asked to comment on the tabling of the report of a Select Committee which went into the Lokpal Bill.
In the last session also, Agrawal was the first to oppose it in Rajya Sabha and had sought to bring a motion for referring the Bill to a 15-member select committee of the House.
Agrawal said the issue of creating a Lokpal has been there since the times of Jawaharlal Nehru and Atal Bihari Vajpayee but it was not implemented then and why it should be implemented now.
Before we forget the Delhi rape, remember Lokpal.
It's precisely one year, to the day, since Firstpost's Venky Vembu wrote this piece 'Stop dreaming of a Lokpal! Our MPs just gave us a 'kick'.
Today, the Lokpal is all but forgotten, postponed each session of parliament to the next. Now, as the winter session of parliament ends, it has been scheduled for the budget session.
In early December 2011, there seemed to be no doubt that the Lokpal Bill would be passed thanks to the intense pressure from Team Anna, an apparently angry news media and citizens at large. The only debate was on how different the version passed would be from Team Anna's version.
Politicians knew better. They understand the short memories of the news media - and of the citizens.
The government has finally set the stage for the passage of the controversial Lokpal Bill in the Budget session of Parliament. The Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved the draft of the bill with some amendments proposed by the Select Committee of Rajya Sabha.
There are, however, some issues like the government's discretion in transferring an investigating officer of a case without seeking the consent of Lokpal over which the opposition could raise an objection. Anna Hazare has already threatened a fresh agitation.
The draft has also done away with Part III of the bill, which dealt with Lokayukta in the states. Several parties and state governments had opposed the provision seeking formation of Lokpal and Lokayukta under one central Act. On the basis of the recommendations of the parliamentary Select Committee, the government has inserted Section 63, which seeks setting up of the institution of Lokayukta through enactment of a law by the State Legislature within a period of 365 days from the date of commencement of the Act. It also did not accept the Select Committee's recommendation excluding NGOs from Lokpal's scrutiny.
The Union Cabinet has given the go ahead to the amended Lokpal Bill and there is a fair chance that it would be cleared in Parliament soon. Now, Anna Hazare must wipe off that grumpy look and sport a smile.
Admitted, the bill in its present form is disappointing. It does not make CBI or CVC independent bodies; it makes Lokpal toothless and not entirely free from government control; it leaves political parties out of the purview of the ombudsman; and it separates Lokayukta in states from Lokpal at the centre. This is not what Hazare had fasted for. But a small beginning is better than no beginning at all. Changes could be brought later on.
If the country gets the institution of Lokpal finally, Anna Hazare deserves the credit for it, well most of it since one cannot ignore the role of activists like of Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan and Kiran Bedi. However, it was on his frail shoulders that the entire agitation over the anti-corruption ombudsman rested. He was the moral force behind it. It was the appeal of his persona - innocent, sincere, honest and grandfatherly - that drew the youth to the movement and made it the phenomenon that it was.
New Delhi: Lokpal will have power to grant sanction to initiate prosecution against a public servant, a parliamentary committee has recommended, seeking to amend a provision in the bill which said no previous sanction was required for the ombudsman to bring charges.
The recommendation of the Rajya Sabha Select Committee on Lokpal comes against the backdrop of the stand taken by the government that the provision in the Lokpal Bill to do away with previous sanction was against the principle of protection.
...The proposal to do away with the requirement of previous sanction...where prosecution is proposed by Lokpal, would be against the principle of protection needed for the public servants, the Law Ministry had told the Committee when it was scrutinising the Bill passed by Lok Sabha .
The constitutional protection available to civil servants under Articles 311 and 320, clause 3(C) of the Constitution would also be adversely affected by the provisions of the proposed law, the Ministry had said.
The Cabinet today approved fourteen amendments to the Lokpal and Lokayukta Bill that had been suggested by the Select Committee and rejected two suggestions, one of them related to transferring of CBI officials.
The Cabinet had agreed to allow the Lokpal to prosecute persons against whom cases were filed, but the ombudsman would have no hold on the transfer of CBI officials who were investigating them, Minister V Narayanasamy told reporters today.
One thing we did not agree on was about officers investigating cases referred by Lokpal. The select committee had recommended that without the permission of the Lokpal the officer should not be transferred. We did not agree on this, the minister said.
The CBI is an independent investigating agency and since it already had a fixed manner in which it operated the agency should be allowed to transfer officials as required, Narayanasamy said.
