Journalism of Courage
A drifting Team Annas rift was today out in the open as the sole Muslim in its core committee stormed out accusing fellow members of being anti-Muslim while the Anna Hazare-Baba Ramdev bonhomie of two days ago was all but jettisoned.
Interestingly,Team Anna,which had pressed righteously earlier that audio recordings of the Lokpal joint drafting committee be made public,claimed Mufti Shamoon Qasmi who left the core committee Sunday was expelled for surreptitiously recording the deliberations of the meeting (today).
Emerging from the meeting,Qasmi accused Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia of hijacking the anti-corruption movement for their own interests and said they were against the participation of Muslims. I dont have any problems with Ramdev. But Kejriwal and Sisodia do not want him because they will lose their importance. They dont want this to happen, Qasmi alleged.
Ramdev,in fact,was at the heart of heated discussions at Team Annas meeting today. While Hazare and Ramdev had announced a joint plan going up to 2014 at a press conference on Friday,Team Anna said today that the truck with the yoga guru would be event specific rather than a general alliance.
They (Hazare and Ramdev) will fast together on June 3 and we will take part in his protests and he will take part in ours. But the movements will run parallel to each other as before and not coalesce. There is complete clarity on this and neither does this go against the spirit of the joint press conference. As for Lokpal,if it is not enacted by May 15,Anna will go on a nationwide tour in June, said core committee member Kumar Vishwas.
A decision was also taken to send notices to 14 Union ministers who were earlier named by Team Anna as being corrupt.
On the issue of Qasmi,Vishwas said that the team was suspicious for some time that information about some of their crucial meetings was being leaked to the media. Today Gopal Rai spotted Qasmis mobile on under his achkan. Initially he refused to part with it but when we checked it,we saw three recordings of the meeting. He was then asked to stay away from future meetings, Vishwas said on the expulsion from the core committee.
About the dichotomy between Team Anna seeking that the Lokpal deliberations be made public and not wanting discussions at their meeting leaked,Vishwas said: We had insisted on making deliberations of the joint drafting committee public because the entire nation wanted to know the Lokpal dialogue. Here the issue was that he was recording in secret and tried to deny it even when caught. The other point is that the strength of the movement has been its surprise element. This would have taken the battle away from us.
Qasmi is the latest to exit Team Anna. Earlier,Swami Agnivesh had to leave after a video clipping purportedly showed him talking against Hazare.
Activists P V Rajagopal and Rajinder Singh had also quit the team,citing differences over the way in which decisions were being taken.
