Team Anna today rejected Government's proposal of excluding lower bureaucracy from Lok Pal's ambit, saying they must be covered to fight graft like alleged swindling by Group C employees of over Rs 30,000 crore worth of ration annually meant for poor.
The Hazare supporters found fault with both the government version of Lok Pal as well as the one proposed by Aruna Roy-led NCPRI, saying all sections of employees and politicians collude with each other and there should be one agency covering the whole bureaucracy.
"They don't indulge in corruption separately," Team Anna said in a statement, rejecting government's proposal of covering lower bureaucracy under Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and NCPRI model of police first investigating the case and not under Lok Pal.
Insisting on inclusion of lower bureaucracy in the Lok Pal, they said inspectors accused of corruption were Group C employees. In states, maximum corruption takes place at the level of Group C employees, they alleged.
"Almost Rs 30,000 crore worth of ration meant for poor people is annually siphoned off by Group C employees. Thousands of crores of leakage takes place in NREGA works at the level of Group C employees. Panchayat Secretary and officials are Group C employees. Huge amount of corruption takes place in panchayat works," the statement said.
Contesting government's argument that the bringing entire bureaucracy under Lok Pal would make it unwieldy, it said if one goes by international standards, India needs 28,500 anti-corruption staff in CVC to check corruption of 57 lakh employees.
"CVC has a staff strength of 230 employees. Does the government plan to provide 28,500 additional workforce to them? If that argument is accepted, then won’t CVC become unwieldy?" it asked.
