NEW DELHI: In trying to bring a please-all Lokpal, the government ended up introducing a Bill that pleased few. Even before the Bill is debated in the extended session of Parliament on December 27, it faced major opposition from political parties across the spectrum, mainly citing a provision that makes it ‘mandatory’ for States to set up Lokayuktas in a form dictated by a central legislation.
BJP, AIADMK, JD-U, BJD, DMK and CPI-M objected to the provision, which they said would result in erosion of the federal structure of governance, and asked the government to withdraw the current Bill, put together in “too much haste”.
Not many seem to buy into Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee’s valiant defence of the Bill’s provisions, in his reply to the introductory debate in the Lok Sabha. Reminding members of the Sense of House resolution adopted during the Monsoon session, he said, “This very House agreed that the Lokpal and the Lokayuktas would be established simultaneously, through a legislation.”
The speakers before him expressed serious reservations. If Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj pointed out that the Bill violates “federal principles” as it amounts to dictating to the states to establish Lokayuktas, AIADMK’s leader M Thambidurai said the Bill was “dangerously trespassing into the domain of the states”.
Protesting the “infringement of states’ rights while framing the law on Lokayukta”, Thambidurai pointed out that the Bill erodes federal structure of the polity as enshrined in the Constitution and would be challenged in courts in the near future.
MPs from most state parties asserted that it should be left to the states to decide in what form to have their Lokayuktas. CPI-M leader Basudev Acharya, BJD MP Bhartruhari Mahtab and Shiv Sena’s Anant Geete were among the MPs who echoed the concern on states’ rights.
