Soon after lunchtime on Saturday, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders were under the impression that the tricky business of drafting a ‘sense of the House' closing message to the standing committee considering the Lokpal Bill had been resolved. This was also the message from Parliament that would be taken to the fasting Anna Hazare on the basis of which he was to end his fast.
However, soon after this draft was finalised between Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha Pranab Mukherjee, Law Minister Salman Khursheed, and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, this came undone.
It was not known what the agreed draft was at that point of time – early afternoon – but it came undone as television channels started beaming images of a furious Arvind Kejriwal, key member of Team Anna, saying government sources were telling him that the BJP had not agreed to certain demands raised by the Anna group.
Panic-stricken leaders of the BJP then rushed to the Prime Minister's Office in Parliamentwhere Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj alleged that someone had “leaked” to the Anna aides what had transpired in Mr. Mukherjee's office just an hour earlier, and this was not based on facts.
Apparently, that was when the afternoon draft unravelled and negotiations began on a fresh draft. The BJP leaders were seen once again rushing to Mr. Mukherjee's room and from there to the Prime Minister's Office. They admitted that the Prime Minister and Mr. Mukherjee were “sincerely trying to find a solution” that would help end the fast undertaken by Mr. Hazare. However, at one point, BJP parliamentary party chairman L.K. Advani told Mr. Mukherjee that the drafting of an appropriate ‘Sense of the House' statement was the work of the government and not that of the Opposition.
The BJP claimed it insisted the three issues flagged by the Anna group – citizen's charter, bringing the lower bureaucracy within the ambit of a Lokpal, and setting up of similar Lokayuktas at the State level – be brought into the draft that would convey the ‘sense of the House' at the end of the debate in each of the two Houses.
Party sources admitted that the BJP was initially not keen to bring the lower bureaucracy within the jurisdiction of a Lokpal as this would clog the institution with possibly hundreds and thousands of cases. One suggestion by the party was that a separate mechanism could deal with corruption in the lower bureaucracy with the Lokpal as the “appellate authority”.
The final ‘sense of the House' summing up statement on this issue reads: “Lower bureaucracy also to be brought under the Lokpal through appropriate mechanism.” What that mechanism will be has not been spelt out.
