Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan on Saturday said that they were putting pressure on the central government to ensure that it brought out a strong Lokpal Bill as suggested by Team Anna rather than a weak bill supporting corruption.
Bhushan was in the city to deliver the annual lecture of the Parisar NGO on the topic of ‘Alternative paradigm for development’.
Explaining why Team Anna was impatient about implementing the Lokpal Bill, Bhushan said, “Although the prime minister has committed to introduce the Lokpal Bill in the winter session of Parliament, we wanted to build pressure on the central government for introducing a strong Lokpal Bill which we have been advocating and not their version, which is very weak.’’
Also vindicating the stand of Team Anna campaigning against the Congress in the Hisar elections, he said, unless Lokpal Bill is made an electoral issue, the government in power will not take the cause seriously.
However, Bhushan termed the Lok Ayukta Bill proposed by Bihar government as weak, and lacking many things like selection and prosecution of Lokayukta by the government itself while the Uttarakhand’s version of Lokayukta Bill was almost identical to the Jan Lokpal Bill proposed by Team Anna.
Meanwhile, speaking on the topic, Bhushan said, “The present paradigm of the government is based on liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation to achieve high rate of gross domestic production but at the cost of our valuable natural resources.’’
Prime minister Manmohan Singh who introduced the liberalisation in the country to attain high GDP, but it has not trickled down to the poor, Bhushan added.
