The Congress appears to have put the cat among the pigeons by suggesting that the proposed Lokpal Bill — currently before a Standing Committee of Parliament — be given constitutional status to give it more muscle.
Taken aback, both the Opposition parties and the Team Anna have objected to the move, saying it is a ploy to delay the passage of the Bill as it would require a Constitutional amendment — a two-thirds majority in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, something the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) does not have in either house: in the Rajya Sabha, it does not even have a simple majority.
But the flip side of this argument, Congress sources point out, is that surely the Opposition parties, who have put the government on the mat on the issue of corruption, would like to make the proposed law as strong as possible and cannot afford, therefore, to oppose giving the Lokpal constitutional status.
“We want to elevate the institution of the Lokpal from a statutory body to giving it a constitutional status,” a Congress functionary said, adding, “the Opposition can support the idea or it can oppose it. If we can push through a constitutional amendment, we can take the credit for creating a stronger law; if it is defeated, we can prove that the Opposition was interested only in opposing us, not in creating a strong Lokpal.”
Evidently, Union Law Minister Salman Khursheed's interview to a news agency, in which he made the suggestion, on Tuesday and MoS in the Prime Minister's Office V. Narayanaswamy's reiteration of the idea on Wednesday appears to be a carefully thought out move by the government to try and seize the advantage on the Lokpal Bill issue. Simultaneously, it could become a vehicle to build up Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who had mooted the idea in August in a speech in Parliament.
To get around the Opposition's criticism that the government should not be making suggestions at a time when the Bill is before the Standing Committee, a Union Minister told The Hindu that party MPs on the Committee would raise it in that forum. On Tuesday, Mr. Khursheed had also said that the text of Mr. Gandhi's speech had been sent to the Standing Committee. “From my point of view, it was a value addition,” he said, adding, “We want that value addition to be seen as a value addition and not as a stratagem to delay or bypass the main intentions.”
In his speech in August, Mr. Gandhi said, “We speak of a statutory Lokpal but our discussions cease at the point of its accountability to the people and the risk that it might itself become corrupt. Madam Speaker, why not elevate the debate and fortify the Lokpal by making it a constitutional body accountable to Parliament like the Election Commission of India?”
Even though the government and the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) had been separately working on drafts of a Lokpal Bill before civil society groups leapt into the arena, the credit for all movement on a Lokpal Bill has gone to Team Anna. Over the last few months, the government has also been announcing measures , both legal ad executive, to tackle corruption – but none of these have caught the public imagination.
The current move — giving constitutional status to Lokpal — is an attempt to recapture the political space in the fight against corruption.
