The drama in the Rajya Sabha showed that the UPA government was not willing to go even by the will of Parliament. This gives rise to fundamental questions about the functioning of Indian democracy. The year 2011 will be remembered in India as the year of the campaign against corruption and for the Jan Lokpal Bill. The campaign began in January 2011 in the backdrop of the publicity that accompanied the...

Among the demands of the CPM, one of the fiercest critics of the government’s version of the Lokpal Bill, a key one is the inclusion of all government employees under the purview of the Lokpal. Yet, in states that the party rules or has ruled, the Lokayukta Acts passed by CPM governments don’t give the institute such a reach. In Tripura, the government passed a Lokayukta Act a year ago, leaving out...

-The Hindu   ‘Had market-using reforms been used in auctioning spectrum, the scam would not have arisen” Batting for removal of licence regime to tackle corruption, noted economist Jagdish N. Bhagwati on Thursday said the auction of 2G spectrum in 2008 would have averted the telecom scam. He lauded the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for bringing out anti-corruption legislation and asked the civil society to make suggestions and not impose solutions. “High-level...

-The Hindu   Rajya Sabha MP and Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi chaired the 30-member parliamentary panel that presented its voluminous report earlier this month on the Lokpal Bill 2011. The report has points of divergence with both the official Lokpal Bill draft and the Team Anna version. (The Union Cabinet on Tuesday night approved a Bill for the creation of the Lokpal with constitutional status that will have no control over the...

-The Indian Express   The entire spectrum of opinion on the Lokpal bill was on display at the all-party meeting on the issue. Meanwhile, Anna Hazare and his comrades promise another round of agitation, an indefinite fast, a jail bharo campaign and protest outside the homes of Congress leaders, if the bill is not cleared in this parliamentary session, and insist that the session be extended until it is passed. So far, the...