FIRs against 14 ministers by Aug: New Anna demand

Tell us: Is Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign still valid?

Hazare then threatened that unless FIRs were filed against all 14 by August,there will be a nationwide “jail bharo andolan”. He also reiterated his 2014 deadline for the Lokpal Bill,while announcing that he and Baba Ramdev would “work closely” on all agitations henceforth. Incidentally,the last jail bharo planned by Team Anna had fizzled out in Mumbai. What began as an exercise to drum up support for a law for whistleblowers — pictures of many of them formed the backdrop to Team Anna’s stage — quickly went the way of earlier Hazare agitations,with uninhibited censure of the political class the order of the day. An added feature were video clips of speeches made by MPs in Parliament during the Lokpal Bill debate,with JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav who is opposed to the legislation coming in for special mention. In Manish Sisodia’s opinion,Yadav’s opposition to the Bill was a case of “chor ki daadi mein tinka”.

The Union ministers named were P Chidambaram (over the 2G scam and his wife’s defence of Kolkata businessman Kashinath Tapuria in an income tax claim of Rs 580 crore); Ajit Singh (for a Wikileaks claim that in 2008,during the nuclear deal trust vote,he had charged Rs 10 crore per MP to vote for the UPA government); Farooq Abdullah (for alleged financial irregularities in the J&K Cricket Association and death of National Conference activist Syed Yusuf Shah); G K Vasan (for giving away 16,000 acres near Kandla Port allegedly at a loss of Rs 2 lakh crore to the exchequer); Kamal Nath (over the rice export scam); Kapil Sibal (for reducing a Rs 650 crore fine on Reliance to Rs 5 crore); Sharad Pawar (for “links” with Abdul Karim Telgi); Sriprakash Jaiswal (over alleged irregularities in allocation of coal blocks); Sushikumar Shinde and Vilasrao Deshmukh (over the Adarsh scam and a land transfer allegation against Deshmukh); M K Azhagiri (for alleged attacks on political rivals); Virbhadra Singh (for allegedly asking for bribes); S M Krishna (over the Karnataka mining scam); and Praful Patel (for buying “unnecessary expensive aircraft” when he was civil aviation minister).

“We say there should be inquiries and only those found innocent should be allowed into Parliament. Do you agree?” Arvind Kejriwal asked the crowd after listing out the names. He went on to quote a popular line from the recent hit Paan Singh Tomar,asking parliamentarians to think “why the country applauds every time somebody says ‘there are dacoits in Parliament’.”

Hazare repeated his old order of priorities — a Jan Lokpal Bill,the right to reject,power to gram sabhas and agitation against forcible land acquisition. He claimed it was the fear of Ramdev and he coming together that had triggered the police crackdown last June on a rally by the yoga guru in Delhi.

Team Anna also ran 25 short films on whistleblower and RTI “martyrs”.

Earlier in the day former Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde dispelled all notion of his “distance” from Team Anna and talked about how illegal acts like mining happen only with political patronage.

Kiran Bedi’s focus was more local,as she urged the crowd to prepare for the Assembly elections in Delhi in 2013.

Minister of State for Human Resource Development E Ahamed said the government was “unperturbed” by Team Anna’s latest protest. “If you want to make a small issue a bigger issue,you can have it. But so far as the UPA government is concerned,we are not perturbed… Parliament is supreme… We are always following parliamentary procedures. Parliament’s importance cannot be reduced.”

Congress spokesperson Rashid Alvi too said that while Hazare has the right to fast,lawmaking remains the prerogative of Parliament.