The co-chairperson of the Joint Drafting Committee on the Lokpal Bill, Shanti Bhushan, has urged Union Finance Minister and chairman of the Lokpal panel Pranab Mukherjee to treat the two drafts as the outcome of the joint committee and not to treat the Team Anna draft as a “dissent note.”
In a letter to Mr. Mukherjee, Mr. Bhushan took exception to Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily's statement calling the government draft the “real” one and Team Anna's draft “at best a dissent note” and opposed his suggestion presenting a section-wise comparative chart of the government's draft and the Jan Lokpal Bill to the Cabinet and to all political parties.
He said the chart did not accurately present the Jan Lokpal Bill and pointed to inaccuracies at several places, besides not quoting in full various sections. The chart completely kept in the dark the provisions of the Jan Lokpal Bill.
Reminding Mr. Mukherjee of the decision taken at the last meeting of the committee, Mr. Bhushan hoped the government would take both drafts to the Cabinet and the all-party meeting.
He said it would be wrong to treat Team Anna's draft as a dissent note given that out of the 10 members on the committee, five had endorsed one draft, while the other five had consented to second one.
In such a situation, he argued, both the drafts enjoyed equal weightage as far as the outcome of the committee was concerned.
He expressed his willingness to combine the two drafts in the form of a chart, provided Team Anna was allowed to correctly present its views.
He hoped Mr. Mukherjee would not release the chart without the concurrence of all the members.
