Lokpal bill drafting panel meets in ‘conducive atmosphere’

The first meeting of the joint drafting committee for a tough ombudsman bill was held here on Saturday under the shadow of a controversy over a leaked audio tape purportedly featuring the co-chair of the panel.

The 10-member committee, first-of-its-kind in India, and formed after a hunger-strike by Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare, seeking equal participation of the government and civil society that aims to draft the anti-graft Jan Lokpal Bill.

The meeting, chaired by Union Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, went on for about two-and-a-half hours after it started at 11.30 am. The proceedings were audio-recorded.

Telecom minister Kapil Sibal, who is also a part of the committee, later told reporters, ?The meeting was fruitful, everyone made valuable contribution. We all want the Bill to be introduced in the Monsoon Session.?

?The meeting was held in a conducive atmosphere,? he said.

The panel will meet next on May 2, Sibal added.

Besides Mukherjee and Sibal, the other panel members who attended the meeting include Home Minister P Chidambaram, Law Minister Veerappa Moily and Water Resources Minister Salman Khursheed from the government side, while the civil soceity was represented by former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan (co-chairman), Anna Hazare, eminent lawyer Prashant Bhushan, Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hege and RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal.

The meeting on Saturday comes as Shanti Bhushan finds himself in the middle of a wrangle dubbed as the ?CD controversy?.

Media organisations on Friday anonymously received a compact disc, containing intercepted conversations allegedly between Bhushan, former Samajwadi Party (SP) member Amar Singh and party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The contents of the tape are yet to be corroborated but they allege that Bhushan suggests the two influential politicians that a court judge can be bribed and his son Prashant Bhushan, also a member of the Lokpak panel, can get the job done for Rs 4 crores.

Speaking to the media over the audio tapes, Prashant Bhushan said that they were fabricated and an attempt smear the drafting committee which is trying to work out the tough anti-graft bill, pushed back for 42 years.

Asking for the CD to be examined by a forensic lab, Bhushan said that while the voice on the tape might be his father?s, it appears as though different conversations were joined together to create a false narrative.

He went on to say that his father had never met Amar Singh and that he had lodged a police complaint to determine the origin of the disc.

Expelled SP member, Amar Singh, who had a high volume fallout with his party a few months ago said that he did not remember anything. ?I’ve spoken to Mulayam Singh thousands of times, spoken to dozens of lawyers several times,? he said.