-The Telegraph
Senior advocate Shanti Bhushan said the government should withdraw the bill it had introduced in the Lok Sabha and table the Jan Lokpal bill when Parliament meets on Tuesday. Monday is a holiday.
Bhushan, law minister during the 1977-79 Janata Party regime, said the government could issue a whip to get the Jan Lokpal bill passed in Parliament. He cited the 1975 example when the ruling Congress pushed through the 39th amendment to the Constitution that put the election of the Prime Minister beyond court scrutiny.
Allahabad High Court had set aside Indira Gandhi’s election on the ground of electoral malpractice. The amendment was passed in a very short time to pre-empt a hearing in the Supreme Court, which the government feared would have upheld the high court order.
“If the government feels that some small changes need to be made to the (Jan Lokpal) bill, then even those should be made only after taking permission and support from Anna…. If they are willing to give that assurance, then it will show a respect for public sentiment and it is possible that Anna may agree to it,” Bhushan, who had fought the case against Indira Gandhi, said.
He said the government could pass the Hazare group’s version of the bill within days if it had a “strong will” to do so. “I have been a Union law minister and I know how things happen in government,” he said.
Hazare had yesterday put August 30 as the deadline for Parliament to pass his group’s version of the bill. Or else, he said, he would continue his fast till his last breath.
Bhushan said the bill could be introduced on Tuesday in the Lok Sabha, which could take it up for discussion on Wednesday and Thursday before passing it. It could then be tabled in the Rajya Sabha and, after discussions on August 29-30, be passed by the end of the month.
The veteran lawyer said there had been several instances of Parliament passing bills within minutes of them being tabled. Fellow team member Arvind Kejriwal said the government was “wasting precious time on a wrong and faulty bill”.
The group today said the explanation that the bill was with a parliamentary standing committee was just a pretext. Lawyer Prashant Bhushan said the Lokpal bill had been introduced eight times in the past 42 years but never passed. “This is the ninth time it has been introduced,” he said.
The Hazare group also criticised advertisements in newspapers today asking the public for their comments on the Lokpal bill. The government advertisements were issued as part of the consultative process that any bill goes through while it is with a standing committee.
But Hazare team member Kiran Bedi said the advertisements should have carried “both our version and the government’s version”. “This is a spurious debatethat the standing committee will be conducting,” the former cop said.