Pranab Mukherjee on Friday told Congress president Sonia Gandhi at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting that the government was ready with its own Lokpal bill in 2010 itself.
This should raise the question as to why the UPA government shelved its own bill and agreed to negotiate afresh with Anna Hazare and his team. The government did not even bring its bill to the table when the tussle was on between the civil society and the five ministers.
The inference becomes inevitable that the storm at Jantar Mantar blew away the UPA Lokpal Bill. The impression that the five ministers gave was that the bill that came out of the drafting committee negotiation was an outcome of fresh consultations.
It is the convention in a parliamentary democracy that the government prepares the legislation and brings it to Parliament, where it is discussed at the committee level and then voted into law in the two Houses.
Though the opposition parties usually suggest amendments in the committee, it is only rarely that the government accepts and acknowledges them.
