Govt doesn't give in completely to Anna's demands

Both the Houses of Parliament on Saturday passed an unanimous ‘sense of the House' resolution, approving in-principle the anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare's three demands for calling off his fast.

At the end of an eight-hour discussion in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, said that there was an in-principle agreement among the members that the proposed Lokpal Bill should provide for a Citizen's Charter and extend the anti-corruption watchdog's jurisdiction to all Union Government employees and to the States through establishment of Lokayukts.

Mr Mukherjee said that the acceptance of these three demands put forth by Mr Hazare was being conveyed as a ‘sense of the House' to the Parliament Standing Committee, to which the Government's Lokpal Bill has already been referred to.

The adoption of the resolution by lawmakers puts to an end — for the time being — the impasse between the Congress-led Government and civil society activists led by Mr Hazare over their respective versions of the Lokpal legislation.

The current round has been more or less even-steven. Mr Hazare has got the Government and Parliament to agree to consider his three key demands. But he has not managed to get the Government to withdraw its own Bill and force Parliament to consider the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by his team.

Mr Hazare's team had originally sought a written commitment that the Government would agree to introduce the Jan Lokpal Bill and have it passed without referring it to the Standing Committee in the current session of Parliament.

Most MPs who participated in Saturday's debate asserted that Parliament was ‘supreme' as far as lawmaking was concerned and they would entertain no dilution on this count. krsrivats@thehindu.co.in

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