Within hours of the ruling Congress attacking him as “corrupt”, Anna Hazare dared the party and its government at the Centre to file an FIR against him and hold an inquiry over allegations of maladministration in the NGOs led by the social activist.
The 74-year-old Gandhian even chose to broaden the scope of his hunger strike starting here on August 16, by announcing that he would end the fast only the authorities promised to probe the charges of corruption made against him. Hazare’s stir primarily aims to force the government to bring the prime minister and the judiciary under the proposed Jan Lokpal Bill.
Addressing an evening press conference, Hazare, along with leading RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal, also challenged the Congress, whose spokesman Manish Tewari today hurled the corruption charges, to come out with a list of the party’s funders and post it on its website. “We,” said Kejriwal, “brought out a list of our funders within 24 hours of charges being made by (Congress leader) Digvijay Singh. Now we challenge that party to come out with their list of funders over the last five years.”
Hazare said that it was his personal request and a fast that prompted the Maharashtra government to form a committee, headed by Justice P B Sawant, and hold an inquiry into charges against him. “One of the four ministers who had cooked up charges against me,” Hazare said, “was one I had accused of corruption.”
The Sawant panel, in its February 2005 report, upheld as “true” the charges against three of the four ministers. “Of them, Padmasingh Patil had given a supari of Rs 30 lakh to get me killed. Then, there was Suresh Jain, who filed cases against me in 11 courts. And Navab Patil.”
Hazare claimed that the committee could find no corruption charges against him, saying it only pointed out technical flaws in the running of the trusts. The Government and Congress, he said, had been attacking everyone in his India Against Corruption team.
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“The only one left to attack was me; so now they are targeting me.” Hazare said it was his spotless reputation that had always enabled him to take on the powerful in the Maharashtra government for past two decades.
He also denied charges of having diverted Rs 2.2 lakh from his trusts to celebrated his 61st birthday. “I have never celebrated a single birthday. That year, some leaders in Maharashtra insisted on celebrating my birthday. They sponsored the function. How am I to blame for it?”
The India Against Corruption leaders said they feared if mischief-makers would try to intrude the satyagraha and create trouble. Said supercop Kiran bedi: “If someone tries to get violent or disrupt the peace, then it is an intruder and not one among us.”
National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy, who heads the civil society group National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), critiqued both the India Against Corruption as well as the government for keeping other views out of the discourse that preceded the drafting of the Lokpal Bill. The NCPRI, she claimed, was assured both by chairman of the joint drafting committee Pranab Mukherji and co-chair Shanti Bhushan that there would be a formal public consultation. But this did not happen.
She said that what followed was a “polarised discourse”. Later it became “impossible” to suggest changes. “Any difference was viewed with suspicion and mistrust by the civil society members of the Joint Committee. Criticisms evoked sharp reactions, and statements have been made that no amendments or change to the principles or the framework is possible, and that disagreement with the draft was tantamount to promoting corruption. We were baffled by such statements,” she said in a note.
A single all-powerful Lokpal may not be the ideal solution to combat corruption. Roy has suggested an alternative comprising multiple reforms including a grievance redressal system.