The government on Wednesday night took a tough stand and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, said a source, made it clear to Anna Hazare’s associates that if anything happened to the fasting Gandhian, they would be held responsible. Also, the source said, the government was thinking of an evacuation operation late at night at the Ramlila Maidan.
At 11pm, Team Anna members Prashant Bhushan, Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi took to the stage at the maidan. While Kejriwal accused the government of reneging on its promise, Bedi said Mukherjee scolded them at the meeting. Hazare appealed to the crowd to remain non-violent if the police took him away forcibly.
Earlier in the day, the first meeting between the government and Team Anna made little progress. While everyone hoped that the all-party meeting in the evening would bring forth a solution, that did not happen. And the last meeting of the day, between Team Anna and Mukherjee, drew a blank.
In the evening, major political parties failed to reach a consensus after spending four hours at PM Manmohan Singh’s official residence discussing the situation, accusing Hazare and his aides of using pressure tactics and finally blaming the Congress for the mess. Once the government had realised that even the opposition parties were not in favour of the Jan Lokpal Bill, said the source, it decided to harden its stand.
Now, if anything goes wrong, the Congress can share the blame with all parties, the source said. This may explain why the last talks of the day failed and Team Anna complained that the “government’s attitude had changed from being conciliatory to combative”.
Bhushan told that the talks had failed and “we have to start from scratch”. Another meeting is scheduled between the government and Team Anna on Today. In effect, this means Hazare’s fast will move on to the 10th day, unless his health deteriorates and Team Anna members move him to hospital in the light of Mukherjee’s warning.
Kejriwal said he had asked Mukherjee if the government planned to send the police to Ramlila Maidan and the finance minister had told them that was not his call.
Though all the representatives told after the all-party meeting that they wanted a “strong Lokpal Bill”, the fact remains that they were unhappy with Team Anna's agitation and that they were making demands to suit their own political considerations.
After Singh started the discussions, his cabinet colleagues Mukherjee and home minister P Chidambaram took over and conducted the meeting. But it soon became evident that the parties were in no mood to reach a consensus. Sushma Swaraj of the BJP was instrumental in changing the statement that was issued after the meeting. While most parties were keen to bring in the bill prepared by UPA National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy, Swaraj put her foot down and, instead, forced everyone to accept the inclusion of only the Jan Lokpal Bill prepared by Team Anna, albeit with changes.
She insisted that the actions of MPs in Parliament be kept out of the Lokpal’s ambit. As for removing the Lokpal, she suggested that the power be vested in Parliament where members could impeach the Lokpal in a manner similar to the impeachment of the higher judiciary. The BJP was, however, keen that the lower bureaucracy be included in the ambit of the Lokpal.
The Samajwadi Party submitted a written representation asking for the judiciary to be kept out of the Lokpal's ambit while bringing NGOs and corporate houses in.
The Left also criticised the agitation. Gurudas Dasgupta of the CPI expressed his displeasure at “people [Team Anna] trying to run down Parliament”.
Towards the end of the meeting, all the parties, however, united to launch a scathing attack on the Congress party’s “inept handling” of the crisis and termed the discussion “a meeting that did not even have a prepared agenda”.
