Aruna for PM under Lokpal

BANGALORE: While the Centre and Team Anna are playing ping-pong with the draft Lokpal Bill, social activist and National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy said she doesn’t agree with both drafts and has her own suggestions.
“We don’t agree with the draft prepared by the government. The only way forward is to go to all political parties. Government will have to listen to us.If they don’t, we’ll force it to listen to us,” Aruna Roy told a select audience after giving a talk organized by the Azim Premji University here on Saturday.
Social activist Nikhil Dey said that although they agreed that “nobody must be above the law”, the Prime Minister should come under the purview of Lokpal with some safeguards. “PM should be accountable only for what he has done himself and the full bench of the Supreme Court and Lokpal should give the nod for the investigation,” Dey said.
Team Aruna doesn’t want the Lokpal to cover both grievances and corruption. “There should be a bottom-up approach where grievances are addressed and sorted out at the district level. There could be Lokpals at district levels and these should address complaints within a time-frame,” Dey added.
Asked why Team Anna and Team Aruna are presenting different versions of the bill, Dey said: “We can’t leave everything to representatives or claim representation over others. It’s a healthy sign there are different opinions.” Aruna said pre-parliamentary legislation consultation process would be the next major issue before the advisory body. “NAC is not powerful. There’s a lot of bureaucracy within it. When I say we should put our version of the bill online, they ask ‘Why?’. At NAC, we listen to everybody. In fact, 50% of comments on the communal violence bill were hate mail,” Roy said.