Lokpal Bill panel to meet today

May 23, 2011 |

New Delhi

Tags:

The joint drafting committee comprising five union ministers and social activist Anna Hazare' representatives will meet here today to take forward the latest version of the Jan Lokpal Bill to combat corruption.

The fourth meeting of the team led by Hazare is expected to ask the ministerial to call at least three meetings every week to complete the drafting process by June 30, deadline set in the gazette notification issued by the government.

At the third meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee, there was a general agreement on seven of the 34 points submitted by the civil society members.

There was agreement on empowering the Lokpal to initiate a suo motu probe into the allegations of corruption against ministers, MPs and senior bureaucrats.

Currently, a minister can be prosecuted only after sanction from the Prime Minister. Lok Sabha Speaker or Rajya Sabha Chairman has to give the nod in case of action against MPs.

Former Union minister Shanti Bhushan, a member of Hazare's team and co-chair of the Committee, in a letter to Mukherjee last week had suggested that government first present its views on all the remaining points and possible solutions on issues on which there were divergent views.

At a round-table organised recently, two former Chief Justices of India - J.S. Verma and M.N.Venkatachalaiah - had opposed inclusion of Judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts in the proposed legislation.

The latest version has a new clause, Clause 13-C, which gives wide powers to 'an appropriate bench of the Lokpal' to approve interception and monitoring of messages or data or voice transmitted through telephones, internet or any other medium as covered under the India Telegraph Act, read with Information and Technology Act 2000.

Another new provision in this draft is for setting up of a separate 'prosecution wing' for the office of Lokpal, which is already envisaged to have powers to investigate.

The draft was circulated to government representatives during the Committee's fist meeting on April 16.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/75270" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-98b8f33eeac5b8d597d370c72a531261" value="form-98b8f33eeac5b8d597d370c72a531261" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="87890711" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>