Lokpal panel meets today amid ?CD controversy?

The new committee formed to draft a tough ombudsman bill is expected to meet for the first time on Saturday, even as a controversial leaked audio tape purportedly featuring the co-chair of the panel is doing rounds, media report said.

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

The meeting on Saturday comes as Shanti Bhushan, a former federal law minister and the co-chairman of the committee nominated by the civil society activists, 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.