It is not novel for non-officials to be invited to official deliberations for the framing of new legislation. Their views have occasionally been sought on bills pertaining to the social sector and the environment. But it is a new experience in India to set up a joint panel of government ministers and social activists in equal proportions
to draft a bill, and the committee being co-chaired by a non-official member — as is the case with the group tasked with drafting a bill to put in place the institution of Lokpal.
The panel’s first meeting on Saturday had a saving grace or two, and this should be acknowledged while pointing to problems that might lie ahead.
Anna Hazare, the chief architect of the civil society campaign whose efforts produced the extraordinary bill-making panel, has reportedly agreed that the committee’s draft will go before Parliament, and then the normal legislation-making processes would apply. This is a significant step. During the recent Jantar Mantar campaign there was insistence in some quarters that the so-called Jan Lokpal Bill (the document produced by activist zealots) must be accepted the way it was, with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition underwriting its passage through Parliament, a clearly absurd proposition intended to sanctify lawmaking by impassioned, non-elected individuals. A related idea was also jettisoned — that the panel would only discuss the Jan Lokpal Bill, containing the ideas of the Jantar Mantar group on the subject. Fortunately, the panel has now accepted that this will be only one of the source documents that will be considered. This too is an important step forward. An earlier version of the bill that has already been discussed by a parliamentary select committee is thus also now on the table. Further, the non-official panellists have dropped their earlier insistence on videotaping and telecasting the committee’s deliberations. If this had been agreed to, it is apt to have led to unprecedented grandstanding by members, rather than careful deliberation.
While we welcome the positives, there remains an important danger to ward off. A sword of Damocles hangs over the panel to conclude its work by the last day of June. This coercive aspect — Mr Hazare had earlier warned that if the bill was not got ready by the suggested date, he would begin another hungerstrike — no doubt owes to the circumstances of the constitution of the committee. So complex are the roots of corruption in India, and so varied the patterns of its spread, it is hard to see how clear-cut ideas can emerge within a short timeframe dictated by external agents. The National Advisory Council, a civil society outfit chaired by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi which has some eminent persons on it, has also advanced certain ideas on the Lokpal Bill. On Saturday, as the bill-making panel sat in its inaugural session, the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information, led by former Chief Justice of India J.S. Verma, was advancing a noteworthy critique of what had transpired so far, and offering suggestions. It would be a shame if views from these quarters were not considered by the Lokpal Bill committee.
The incumbent Chief Justice of India, Justice S.H. Kapadia, while delivering a lecture on Saturday, also raised a matter of direct relevance to the deliberations on the Lokpal issue. While cautioning the judiciary against accepting political favours, and keeping socialising to a minimum as was the norm in an earlier era, Mr Kapadia urged maintaining of a balance between safeguarding the judiciary’s independence and ensuring accountability from it. The Lokpal committee must hear this urging in the right perspective as it debates ideas on the relationship between the Lokpal and the judiciary.