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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Hisar Effect cuts other way, two members quit Team Anna citing its political turn

Hisar Effect cuts other way, two members quit Team Anna citing its political turn

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published Published on Oct 18, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 18, 2011
-Express News Service
 
Two prominent members of Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption have dissociated themselves from the group in protest against its overt flirtation with politics, as seen during the Lok Sabha bypoll in Hisar.
 
Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh, who earned fame working on water conservation in villages in Rajasthan, and P V Rajagopal, a tribal and land rights activist, have decided to quit the core committee, the 26-member panel which functions as the IAC’s highest decision-making body.

“Some of the decisions taken by the group, like the involvement in Hisar bypoll, did not have consent of the core committee. In fact, I did not know how to react to such decisions,” Rajagopal said.

He also expressed his inability to attend core committee meetings in future because of his preoccupation with the yearlong Kanyakumari-Delhi march that he has begun to press for land reforms.

The decision of the two activists spells further trouble for the group that has faced several problems since deciding to test political waters by campaigning against the Congress in Hisar. In addition, one of its leading lights, advocate Prashant Bhushan, was roughed up in his office by goons who claimed to have been upset by his alleged remarks calling for plebiscite in Kashmir. The other lead campaigner, Arvind Kejriwal, had a slipper thrown at him in Lucknow today.

“I have no intention of putting the group or the anti-corruption campaign in trouble. I was uncomfortable with some decisions that I, as member of the core committee, would have had to own up to. So I wrote to Arvind Kejriwal asking to be relieved of my responsibilities as member of the core committee,” Rajagopal said from Palakkad in Kerala. He said Kejriwal had requested him to rethink his decision.

Rajendra Singh said he wasn’t in any case a very active member of the group, and its political turn had now made it difficult for him to remain involved in even a limited way. “When I felt that the team is taking a political turn, I decided it is the day to quit,” Singh said.

Rajagopal said the group was not very well-knit to begin with.

“It was never a very coherent group in the first place. Activists working in unrelated fields had come together on a common platform on an anti-corruption agenda. In fact, we had problems in calling the group Team Anna. We thought something like Team India would have been better. But as long as the group was working on the agenda, we were supporting it. I will continue to support it on the campaign against corruption,” Rajagopal said.

Prominent Team Anna member Kiran Bedi said in Kolkata that people were free to leave the team for their “own personal reasons”.

“Team Anna is a team of volunteers and each volunteer is coming with a conviction of their own. Some are coming from agriculture movement, some from water movement some are from tribal movement and some human rights. When it is about volunteers you can always volunteer out for your own personal reasons,” Bedi said on the sidelines of a programme at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Asked if Rajagopal and Singh had left because of Kejriwal, Bedi said, “I do not go by hearsay. Arvind is a very passionate man.”


The Indian Express, 19 October, 2011, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/hisar-effect-cuts-other-way-two-members-quit-team-anna-citing-its-political-turn/861914/


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