Talks fail; Hazare threatens fast from August 16 The Joint Drafting Committee on the Lokpal Bill ended its deliberations on Tuesday without a common text, and the government has decided to go ahead with its plan of consulting political parties and Chief Ministers on the two different versions before getting the Cabinet to clear a final draft. Expressing “deep disappointment” at what it said was the government's watered down version of a...

Only one contentious issue came up for discussion at Monday's meeting between the government representatives and civil society members of the Joint Drafting Committee on the Lokpal Bill. It was the selection and removal of Lokpal members. The two sides differed on both counts. The government preferred a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Lok Sabha Speaker, the leaders of both Houses, Leaders of the Opposition of both Houses, the Home...

Marked by distrust and, on the government's part an element of coercion as well, the civil society-UPA exercise to jointly draft a Lokpal bill formally ended in failure on Tuesday with the two sides exchanging conflicting drafts. The government is unable to accept civil society's version of an anti-corruption authority with sweeping jurisdiction over the Prime Minister's Office, top judiciary and actions of MPs in Parliament along with merging entities like...

The Lokpal is designed to be a comprehensive anti-corruption institution independent of the government, empowered to effectively investigate corruption of all public servants. But most of the critical elements in this vision have been rejected. The latest draft report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on hydrocarbon production sharing contracts and the transfer of oilfields to Reliance is only the latest of the mega scams to surface in...

-The Telegraph   Sonia Gandhi today sent a terse reply to Anna Hazare’s complaints about a “conspiracy” to defame him, the response setting the tone before a last-ditch bid to resolve differences on the Lokpal bill. The Congress chief’s reply to a letter from the Gandhian came a day ahead of a scheduled meeting of the joint committee of government representatives and social activists set up to draft the proposed anti-corruption law. Sonia’s...