By IANS,
New Delhi : Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the government’s chief interlocutor with Team Anna, Friday said some proposals of the civil society’s Jan Lokpal bill, if accepted, would be difficult to implement. However, he assured that the parliamentary standing committee will look at all views after the discussion in parliament Saturday.
“The parliamentary standing committee will have to take into account all views. The legislation will be amended. The whole house will have to decide whether to accept these amendments,” Mukherjee told CNN-IBN in an interview with Karan Thapar.
He was responding to a question on the key demands of Anna Hazare about including the prime minister, judiciary and lower bureaucracy in the ambit of the final legislation. Hazare has also demanded in the legislation to provide for the appointment of state Lokayuktas.
“The bill which is under consideration of the parliamentary standing committee contains a large number of provisions of the Jan Lokpal bill,” Mukherjee said amid intense efforts by the government with civil society activists to break the logjam over a stronger Lokpal bill.
Responding to the demand of Team Anna to bring the lower bureaucracy in the ambit of the Lokpal bill, Mukherjee said if the legislation were to bring the cabinet secretary to a railway gangman under the purview of the same legislation, it would be difficult to manage.
“It must be practical and implementable,” Mukherjee said amid widespread perception that some of the demands made by the 74-year-old Hazare, who has been fasting for 11 days to push a stronger anti-corruption legislation, were difficult to reconcile with norms of parliamentary democracy.
Reacting to the demand for state Lokayuktas, Mukherjee said the amended Lokpal bill can at best provide for a model legislation that can be used by the state governments to enact their own Lokayukta. “They can pass their own Lokayukta act. The states will have to make their own legislation,” said Mukherjee.
“What is reasonable and proper, the government has been doing from day one. The government is trying to reach Anna Hazare with a rational approach,” Mukherjee said when asked whether he regretted that the Hazare agitation was not handled well by the government.