Exclude PM from Lokpal, says Badal
Charting a somewhat contrary course to his friends in the BJP, Punjab’s chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, on Tuesday, supported the Congress line on excluding the Prime Minister from the ambit of the proposed Lokpal Bill.
“All chief ministers, the entire judiciary, including the Chief Justice and judges of the Supreme Court and high courts should be brought under the purview of the Lokpal. But the Prime Minister should not be included as he has to discharge extremely sensitive duties while dealing with several international and diplomatic issues which warrant certain norms to maintain secrecy of office,” Mr Badal told reporters at Amloh near Chandigarh.
“It is my personal view that the office of the Prime Minister should be excluded from the proposed Lokpal in the larger national interest,” said the octogenarian CM who had only recently expressed his support for both Anna Hazare and yoga guru Ramdev’s black money campaign.
But also not wishing to being seen as toeing the Congress line, Mr Badal quickly relapsed to his more familiar rhetoric of castigating the UPA government in New Delhi for its “many failures” including poverty alleviation, removing illiteracy and generating employment in the country.
He said his party, the Shiromani Akali Dal’s call for a Punjab-wide dharna on June 16 to protest corruption and unbridled inflation under UPA rule is meant as a “wake-up call to remind the Congress of its democratic duties.”
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