“Happy” with the outcome of the all-party meeting on the Lokpal Bill, a complacent government said on Monday that it would bring the bill in the monsoon session, and try to get it passed as early as possible.
With most of the political parties in favour of parliamentary supremacy on the bill, the government said it would bring a bill in parliament in accordance with established procedure which defines the role of political parties to pilot and approve legislations. However, there was no clear commitment on the timeline of passing the bill.
“All parties which participated in the meeting, emphasised the primacy of the parliamentary procedure, and the primacy of the role of political parties to pilot an approved legislation. While the government will make every effort to pass the bill at the earliest, it will depend upon the members of parliament and the desire to follow an established procedure,” Union home minister P Chidambaram said.
The government is trying to interpret Sunday’s meeting as an endorsement that parliamentary procedure is important and parliament is supreme in making laws. This is to show that it is not yielding ground to civil society activists demanding a nearly draconian Lokpal Bill. In fact, the government wants to take shelter behind constitutional proprietary to deflect the civil society’s demands.
“We do not see this as an occasion to rewrite the Constitution. We are drafting a bill.
However, the BJP, which has so far refrained from airing its views openly on the bill, for the first time made it clear that it will not be easy for the government in parliament. BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said his party would argue and debate on each point.
“We do not like the government’s present Lokpal Bill. We will argue and debate in parliament as we want a stronger bill,” Javadekar said. The party said that it wants the PM to be under the Lokpal’s ambit after senior BJP leader LK Advani wrote in his blog that he had all along been in favour of keeping the PM within the purview of the Lokpal. —With agency inputs
