After fast, poll reforms stir next?
Gandhian activist Anna Hazare drinks coconut water and honey offered by two girls to break his fast at the Ramlila Maidan
As veteran Gandhian Anna Hazare broke his 12-day-long fast here Sunday morning, his core team kept up their pressure on the government and Parliament to get the Jan Lokpal Bill passed swiftly. Team Anna decided to push the matter “aggressively” at a meeting Sunday afternoon, asking the government to convene a special session of Parliament in a month’s time to pass the bill, by when it hoped the standing committee too would have finished its work.
“We will be in constant touch with the standing committee and keep reviewing the situation regularly,” said chief Team Anna strategist Arvind Kejriwal. Another A-Team member, Kiran Bedi, is reportedly in touch with the BJP to keep up the pressure on the government, sources said.
But the indications are clear that Team Anna will not confine its agitation to the Lokpal issue. Mr Hazare said on Sunday that next on his agenda now were a slew of electoral reforms, particularly the “right to reject” and “right to recall” elected representatives as this would significantly lower corruption due to the use of money power in elections.
After managing to grab national attention, Team Anna is in no mood to disappear after the Lokpal agitation. “There should be a right to recall elected representatives and a column for right to reject those contesting elections. Once a candidate has spent `10 crores and the election is cancelled, then right sense will prevail... Let’s see how much money they can spend,” said Mr Hazare.
Declaring that the “people’s parliament” was bigger than the Parliament in New Delhi, Mr Hazare said: “We can now move ahead with implementing laws and the Constitution drafted by Dr B.R. Ambedkar,” he said. Besides electoral reforms, Mr Hazare said his future agenda would include working for farmers, improving the nation’s education system and protecting the environment.
The rift in Team Anna continued to widen. Ms Kiran Bedi and others targeted fellow activist Swami Agnivesh on Sunday, attacking him over a controversial video posted on YouTube in which he is purportedly telling a person alleged to be a Union minister that the government should act tough with the fasting Gandhian. Swami Agnivesh claimed the video footage was “doctored and concocted”. He said this was a “smear campaign” unleashed against him, and denied that he had talked to Union minister Kapil Sibal, who had been involved in negotiations during the initial stages of the standoff between Team Anna and the government.
Speaking to the media, Ms Bedi alleged Swami Agnivesh was caught on camera where he was asking a person (believed to be Kapil Sibal): “Maharaj, aap inko itna kyu de rahe hai (Maharaj, why are you giving them so much)? She criticised Swami Agnivesh for being “unethical”.
Union law minister Salman Khurshid, in an interview to a TV news channel, said that while the government might have made “errors of judgment” in handling Mr Hazare’s fast, it had not committed any “mistakes”.
He said: “Errors of judgement are made whenever you are in a difficult situation. Errors of judgement are not mistakes.”
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