August 30 deadline negotiable, indicates Hazare camp.
For the first time in eight days, there was some indication of an imminent resolution to the deadlock between activist Anna Hazare and the government.
Hazare’s supporters met government representatives and indicated the August 30 deadline to have their Jan Lok Pal Bill was negotiable. They said Hazare would not end his fast but “his medical condition should not be linked to negotiations with government”. The activists will meet the government again tomorrow. The government will also host an all-party meeting.
Tuesday’s meeting followed a letter by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Hazare, urging him to call off the hunger strike and offering to table the Jan Lok Pal Bill in Parliament alongside the Lok Pal Bill. Hazare’s supporters met law minister Salman Khurshid and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee in a bid to reach an agreement over the powers and ambit of the Lok Pal.
Earlier, the government’s effort to reach out to the activists through spiritual leader Bhaiyu Maharaj met no success as the activists refused to deal with non-political interlocutors with no official mandate. At one point, the trust deficit ran so deep that the government believed the activists had no intention of keeping their word and the activists believed the government was misleading them.
It was this trust deficit the PM tried to address in his letter. “The Lok Pal Bill is now before a standing committee of Parliament. I have made it clear earlier and would like to restate that all options are open before the standing committee... Equally, I do maintain they are fully entitled to make any changes to the Bill. In view of that, the formal non-introduction of the Jan Lok Pal version by the government is irrelevant.”
The letter added, “Nevertheless, in view of the concern repeatedly expressed by your team that the Jan Lokpal Bill version should be before Parliament, but more particularly and more importantly, in view of my deep and abiding concern for your health, our government is prepared to request the Speaker, Lok Sabha, to formally refer the Jan Lok Pal Bill also to the standing committee.”
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“We are ready to talk to anybody. However, we will have to keep in mind Parliamentary supremacy and constitutional obligations in matters of legislation,” the PM said.
Till 10.30 in the morning, it was clear the government had no intention of budging from its stand the Bill was before the standing committee and if anyone wanted any changes that was the forum to be petitioned.
Two interventions changed that.
The first was Khurshid’s meeting with activists’ representatives Akhil Gogoi and Arvind Kejriwal at the residence of Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit, where Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit’s trouble-shooter Pawan Khera was also present. Another meeting was held at Khurshid’s residence.
The government held a meeting of its core committee in Parliament attended, among others, by Home Minister P Chidambaram and Defence Minister A K Antony. Even as that meeting was on, a senior minister told Business Standard a set of “people under a banyan tree could not decide what laws would be made in the country”, suggeting the government’s line had not changed.
But around 4 pm, Rahul Gandhi met the PM and urged him to “give them something big”. After that meeting, the PM drafted his letter and the government assigned finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to hold talks with the activists. Mukherjee met them at 6.30 pm.
Differences persist about the mechanism to include the PM in the Lok Pal’s ambit and to cover MPs and lower bureaucracy as well. The activists do not want the Lok Pal Bill to include trusts and NGOs (currently in the government draft even as several ministers own trusts).
The BJP too nudged the activists towards the path of negotiation. Speaking to reporters, the party’s S S Ahluwalia said it did not approve of demonstrations outside MPs’ houses. He said it was not practical to swap the Jan Lok Pal draft with the government’s Lok Pal draft as it was the latter the Union cabinet had cleared. Amendments could be made in the official Bill via representatives of political parties on the standing committee scrutinising it. The BJP’s earlier position was the government had created the Lok Pal problem and had to solve it.