Jan Lok Pal Bill Vs. Lok Pal Bill : Mail from Mr Rajiv Kakria

Please be informed that the Govt. Lokpal Bill has been cleared by the Entire Cabinet ..... and is only a few steps from being law ...... can we really trust such people who introduce such Draconian provisions to curb the Voice that calls out CHOR, CHOR ...... and gives every opportunity to the CHOR ..... including time to destroy evidence. No RWA will be able to perform ...... for fear of being Prosecuted for raising Social Issues or Municipal Apathy Clauses in Govt. Lokpal Bill .... 

1. The most scary provision of the Govt draft is: If a citizen complains against a “babu”. The Babu has a right to file a counter complaint against his accuser in court. If the accuser fails to prove the “babu” is corrupt, he can be jailed for 2 years. ( this means if you accuse a babu, then you will have the onus of proving him corrupt and if you don't you get 2 years jail). If you manage to prove him corrupt his max sentence is 6 months. Whats more, “babu” gets a Govt appointed attorney FREE, while you need to pay for your own defence.

2. The second scary part is called the Preliminary Investigation: As per the Govt draft, if a “babu” is accused of a misdeed, lets say we complain that there is a particular person looking the other way in Olympic Committee in return for 200-300 Cr that he has accumulated. The LokPal has to call the Accused and present ALL the evidence he has collected to the accused. The accused then has a right to explain his defence, which may take a few days. This means that even before the Lokpal can do a CBI style raid and catch the accused off guard, the accused has 2-3 days to make sure the evidence is wiped clean. This is a travesty of justice. Nowhere in the world does an investigative agency have to show all the evidence to an accused BEFORE even a trial starts.

3. The Third part is that Govt draft covers only A class officers of the Govt service. Not B, C & D class. The lower staff officially becomes the collection agents for higher ups ..... nothing will ever get traced to the higher ups. The reason given by the Govt is that there aren’t enough officers to control so many cases of corruption, which would come up if all these officers were included. However, this manpower shortage has not stopped them from including all NGOs REGISTERED OR UNREGISTERED from being under the purview of the Lokpal. THIS IS DANGEROUS, this means that even your housing society/RWA is under the Lok Pal.

 4. The fourth bone of contention lies with the fact that the Govt version of the Lok Pal Bill is not neutral, it allows for a 9 member committee. 5 of which will be Govt appointees such as MPs etc. The others will be people like the serving CVC ....... how will it be different from the PAC which just a few days back prevented the 2G scam report from being tabled. 




Points for Jan Lokpal ..... The Jan Lokpal was placed before the public and on the website and many updated versions were made as and when new facts were placed before them. Enough efforts were made on the part of Team Anna to involve Civil Society .... In one such meeting we had endorsed that the Judiciary be also brought into the ambit of Lokpal ...... which was incorporated in later versions. The one aspect that we specifically had asked for was that too much emphasis have been laid in trying to catch corrupt ....... not much, if anything has been incorporated to Prevent Corruption. When two people connive to loot public exchequer then without proper preventive safeguards it will be impossible to catch or prove wrong doing.

Distributed on behalf of RWAs ...... for information. Part of RWA Resolution to be sent to Prime Minister.