Kiran Bedi described India's Lokpal bill as "retrograde" and "divisive"
LONDON (TrustLaw) – India’s long-awaited anti-corruption bill will undermine its main agency for tackling graft, and could spark further protests unless it is amended, according to campaigner Kiran Bedi, a former high-ranking Indian policewoman.
“It is a retrograde bill. It will weaken the current functioning of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) because it is splitting its responsibilities into three. It is separating inquiry from investigation and prosecution,” anti-graft activist Bedi told TrustLaw in an interview.
“It’s an absolutely divisive bill and if these provisions are not amended, that is the time when the people will be given another wake-up call,” she added, referring to the anti-graft protests that rocked India in 2011.
The legislation to create an ombudsman's office, or Lokpal, to investigate and prosecute suspected government corruption was first proposed in 1968, but has never garnered enough support in India’s parliament to become law.
Now the passage of the bill is seen as crucial to the prospects of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government, which has been dogged by a string of corruption scandals.
However, the ruling Congress party depends on fickle allies and independents for its majority. With a key ally objecting to certain sections of the bill and pressing for amendments, its passage in the current session of parliament due to end later this month appears unlikely.
Last summer, anti-graft activist Anna Hazare, Bedi and others organised massive protests against corruption which spread throughout India, heaping embarrassment on Singh’s Congress Party.
According to Bedi, the protests were sparked by a lack of faith in the original Lokpal bill.
“The starting point (for the protests) was a very poorly drafted Lokpal bill which the government of India had drafted in response to the signing of the U.N. Convention against Corruption. (It) was not in the spirit of the convention, and it was not meeting the growing challenges of corruption in the country,” she said.
While the protests have ebbed in recent months, Bedi said the movement’s leaders are waiting to see what the final Lokpal bill will look like before considering their options.
Ideally, they would like the Lokpal ombudsman to have control over the federal police force, and for the CBI, India’s prime investigating agency, to be free from what Bedi described as “political control”.
“You cannot in any movement be constantly in agitation mode. You cannot be constantly on fasts... and filling up fields. You can’t be agitating while the parliament is debating. At the moment, the law is before parliament,” Bedi said.
“The activists are closely watching what kind of bill the parliament will finally pass. I think that’s the time when a call will have to be taken as to what the country will do,” she added.
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