Govt tells Team Anna we can draft Lokpal Bill without you
After evicting Baba Ramdev from Delhi, the government today asserted itself against Anna Hazare and his colleagues, sternly telling them that it would go ahead with the drafting of the Lokpal Bill “even in their absence” if civil society representatives continued with their boycott of the joint committee meetings.
It also underlined to the Hazare camp that its involvement in the drafting exercise was being seen as undermining of the “supremacy of the Constitution” by other political parties. The government, however, invited them for the next meeting of the joint committee on June 15.
The government’s curt message was delivered shortly after the Congress bracketed both Anna Hazare and yoga guru Ramdev together calling them “mukhautas (masks)” of the BJP and asserting that there was “no bigger sanyasi” in contemporary politics than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
This sudden assertion of authority was a clear attempt by the UPA government, and the ruling party, to regain some of the significant ground it had yielded ever since it notified the joint drafting committee in April under pressure from Hazare who had launched an indefinite fast against corruption at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. The committee has met thrice.
Yesterday, the Hazare camp expressed its solidarity with Ramdev — who was forced out of Delhi on Saturday night — and announced that it would not attend today’s scheduled meeting in protest. The co-chair of the joint committee, Shanti Bhushan, even demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet over the police action on Ramdev, who had organised a fast on the issue of black money.
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