http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/story/jan-lokpal-bill-not-understood-by-most-people-aruna-roy/1/148912.html Jan Lokpal Bill not understood by most people: Aruna Roy
ITGD Bureau | New Delhi, August 23, 2011 | Updated 15:59 IST aruna Roy says the Jan Lokpal Bill will not help remove corruption completely. Accusing the civil society group, headed by anti-corruption activistAnna Hazare, of not following democratic method to seek a strong Lokpal Bill, Aruna Roy -- a member of National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) -- on Tuesday claimed that the public support to the ongoing movement was because most of the people did not understand what it really meant. Talking to Headlines Today Executive Editor Rahul Kanwal, Roy said, "Jan Lokpal Bill, I challenge you, is not understood by most people. The idea of a magic wand is understood by people. There I think is something wrong... making promises to the people that by passing a law you deal with the whole gamut of corruption." "The Jan Lokpal will take care of an aspect of corruption in governance. It will not take care of complete corruption. It will not really take care of public corruption in different areas," added the activist, who also happens to be a member of National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Justifying her opposition to the Team Anna version of Lokpal Bill, Roy said, "We feel that the solution to corruption is not in that one Lokpal Bill, not in the form that it is. While we think that the expression against corruption is a great thing, but the solutions to that is not... I think it's too simplistic... in its present formation there are many problems." Accusing key Anna aide Arvind Kejriwal of hijacking the issue from NCPRI, Roy said, "The Jan Lokpal debate actually came out of a National Campaign for People's Right to Information special meeting convened at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library last year in which NCPRI made Arvind the convener of a group that was to look at the whistleblower's bill and other accountability provisions necessary to stop the killing of RTI activists. This happened sometime in September 2010." "Arvind then broke off and formed the India Against Corruption without consultation of the NCPRI or the MKSS, which are my parent bodies. After forming India Against Corruption he wanted us to join India Against Corruption at which point the MKSS made it very clear that we would not join a campaign in which other secular and organisations which have been working for corruption were not members, but it was only a couple of members from us but very prominently there were people from religious organisations. We didn't use the word saffron, we said religious organisations," she added. Roy named Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living as the religious persons and organisations involved in Jan Lokpal Bill draft process and Hazare's movement. "... but the debate on the bill we had with Mr Kejriwal and Mr Prashant Bhushan many times. In fact, on the 3rd of April at Nehru Memorial Library, the records can be got from the library... There was a detailed discussion on the bill and there were differences of opinion. And, there were differences of opinion even before that, expressed opinions. We tried to come to a consensus," Roy said. "On the 4th (of April), there was a meeting in the National Advisory Council. The National Advisory Council took up the bill and Mr Kejriwal was given the job of putting together the amended principles that emerged after differences were stated by a number of people. Thereafter Mr Kejriwal never came back to us with the modified and amended principles he was supposed to draft. After that there was no formal discussion except with Prashant Bhushan," she said. Blaming the joint draft panel of not listening to the NCPRI while redrafting the Lokpal Bill, Roy said, "We asked the joint committee for time to depose in front of them. We wrote to Mr Pranab Mukherjee as well as to Mr Shanti Bhushan. Both have replied. Records are available for you to see. They said there would be consultation but they did not call us and they disbanded." "It's only subsequent to that the National Campaign for People's Right to Information made its opinion public only in the interest that there should be a public debate. Even today we do not say that our bill is perfect or our draft is perfect. It's another set of formulations to enrich the debate and make people take an informed choice. We do not agree with the government bill, but we also don't agree with the formulation of the Jan Lokpal Bill," she added. Denying being government props to divide the ongoing movement Roy said, "The government says, because there is large mobilisation, they are funded by American and foreign agencies. Because we have a disagreement, they say we are a government prop or a government aide." "I have issued statements against Posco, which is government sponsored. I am against the UID. We have opposed the CBI being kept under wrap by the government. We say things that the government doesn't like. We hold that freedom very dear," Roy said. Asked if Hazare's movement infringed on Parliament's privileges, Roy said, "All these protests are important and then they work. But to say finally now that only my version should go in and that no other version should be debated and that should be passed is, looking at parliamentary privileges, already the opposition parties have disagreed the government bill... There are other opinions. We pay them salary just to do this job." _______________________________________________ -- Adv Kamayani Bali Mahabal +919820749204 skype-lawyercumactivist * * *The UID project i**s going to do almost exactly the same thing which the predecessors of Hitler did, else how is it that Germany always had the lists of Jewish names even prior to the arrival of the Nazis? The Nazis got these lists with the help of IBM which was in the 'census' business that included racial census that entailed not only count the Jews but also identifying them. At the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, there is an exhibit of an IBM Hollerith D-11 card sorting machine that was responsible for organising the census of 1933 that first identified the Jews.* * * *http://saynotoaadhaar.blogspot.com/* *http://aadhararticles.blogspot.com/* *http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_162987527061902&ap=1*< http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_162987527061902&ap=1> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "humanrights movement" group. To post to this group, send email to humanrights-movement@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to humanrights-movement+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/humanrights-movement?hl=en.
