Digvijay?s veiled offensive on Lokpal panel continues

Congress party general secretary Digvijay Singh on Friday said we was not challenging anyone’s authority on the Jan Lokpal Bill drafting panel even as he raised questions on the effectiveness of one of the members, Santosh Hegde.

Singh, who himself faces corruption charges in Madhya Pradesh where he was once the Chief Minister, asked why Karnataka Lokyukta (ombudsman) Santosh Hegde had failed to check the corruption in the state.

?I am not challenging anyone and neither am I accepting any challenges. I’m just saying that Karnataka has the best Lokayukta bill. They have the best Lokayukta. So why haven’t they been able to stop the corruption in Karnataka?? he was quoted as saying.

?Why are they unable to stop the CM’s corruption, why are they unable to stop the Reddy brothers’ corruption?” he added, referring to the purported land and mining scandals in Karnataka that have entangled even the state’s Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa.

Singh?s comments came after a day of turmoil for the civil society representatives part of the Jan Lokpal Bill drafting panel, as they put up a brave front to what they called a ?smear campaign? targeted to tarnish their reputations.

Speaking to television channels, Santosh Hegde, the ombudsman of Karnataka and a former Supreme Court judge on Thursday said that he was frustrated with the ?vilification? targeted at the members of the joint committee formed to draft the Jan Lokpal Bill.

Hegde said he was ?seriously considering? quitting the panel as he was not ready to face the kind of attacks that have been meted out to his colleagues on the panel Shanti and Prashant Bhushan.

His statements came shortly after activist and Lokpal panel member Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday evening spoke out in full support of advocates Shanti and Prashant Bhushan, who have found back-to-back allegations levelled against them.

At a news conference Kejriwal, along with former cop Kiran Bedi, both members of India Against Corruption (IAC) that is spearheading the campaign for the Jan Lokpal Bill, said that none of the committee members will quit unless the charges against them are proven.

Against the wills of many, a fast-unto-death by Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare, also a member of the IAC, had forced the government to form a joint-committee of civil society representatives and cabinet ministers to draft a tough ombudsman bill.

Called the Jan Lokpal Bill, it had seen stiff opposition from certain sections within the government and politicians possibly because it aims to give an ombudsman police-like powers to prosecute any minister, bureaucrat or judge independently.

Weeks after the Congress-led coalition government at the Centre was forced to bow to demands of the activists, a series of allegations started sprouting up against the civil society members of the panel.

Media offices in Delhi on Apr 15 anonymously received a compact disc containing a taped conversation between Shanti Bhushan, expelled Samajwadi Party member Amar Singh and party chief Mulayam Singh.

In the tape, Bhushan, a senior advocate in the Supreme Court, allegedly suggested to the two influential politicians that a court judge can be bought out and his son Prashant can get the job done for Rs 4 crores.

Prashant Bhushan on Monday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking criminal contempt action against Amar Singh for allegedly fabricating the CD from spliced conversations in an attempt to tarnish their reputation.

Amar Singh too filed a police complaint against the Bhushans for implicating him in the row, dubbed as the ?CD controversy?, alleging that it was the lawyer son-and-father who had distributed the audio tape.

So far both of the parties had firmly maintained that the CD was fabricated. Prashant Bhushan even claimed that forensic analysis showed clear signs of electronic editing in an attempt to tarnish him and his father, who were both part of the Jan Lokpal Bill drafting panel.

However, according to media reports on Thursday, a report from a government forensic lab claimed that the tape was not tampered with and it was genuine. This came in direct contradiction of reports from two private labs cited by the Bhushans.

Thursday?s revelation was followed by another controversy where the Bhushans were accused of getting preferential treatment over land allotment in Uttar Pradesh at a time when Prashant Bhushan was appearing against the state?s Chief Minister Mayawati in a high profile case.

The spree of allegations were accompanied by attacks from Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh who went hopping across television channels raising questions over the credibility of the civil society representatives in the Lokpal panel.

The spree of attacks also saw 73-year-old Anna Hazare whose 98-hour-long hunger strike triggered a nationwide campaign against graft, on Thursday distance himself from the raging controversies saying they had nothing to do with him.

Meanwhile, Santosh Hegde is expected to take a final decision on whether he wants to quit the panel or not after meeting his colleagues on Saturday, media reports said.

For the civil society, it was, as Arvind Kejriwal said at the press conference on Thursday, “difficult times”.