Patna, Nov. 28: The state government hopes that the governor’s office would understand the urgency and enact the Lokayukta bill that aims to check corruption.

The government has decided to table the bill in the winter session of the Assembly.

The governor’s role in enactment of the Lokayukta act is important because the draft bill prepared by the state government has certain provisions — like salary of Lokayukta would be charged on the consolidate fund of the state — which make the statute a “money bill”. According to Article 207 of the Constitution, any money bill cannot be introduced in the state legislature without the governor’s recommendations.

The role of the governor’s office would not end at this point. Even after passage of the bill, the governor’s assent would be required of the bill becoming an act.

According to provisions of Article 200 of the Constitution, the governor can either give his assent or he may declare that he withholds his assent in case of a money bill. If the governor chooses to withhold his assent, the bill would not become act. Article 207 gives another option to the governor and it pertains to the governor’s discretionary power of reserving a bill for the consideration of the President. In case the Bihar governor opts for this option, the fate of the bill would be decided by the President. Moreover, the constitution does not talk about any time limit for the President as far as giving assent or withholding assent to the bill is concerned.

Going by the recent developments in Bihar, it would be interesting to see that how things unfold next month. For, the Bihar government and the office of the governor have been found speaking different languages in recent past on the issue of gubernatorial assent on many bills including the Bihar Administrative Tribunal Bill, 2011, the Bihar State University Commission Bill, 2011 and the Bihar State School Teachers and Employees Dispute Redressal Tribunal Bill, 2011, with the governor withholding his assent to these bills.

These developments, however, have not dampened the spirit of the state government, which is hoping that the governor “will have the same attitude as that of the state government for quick enactment of the act”.

“We hope that the governor would give his assent to the bill at the earliest once it is passed by the state legislature, as the enactment of the Act would be a major step towards fighting corruption,” deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi told The Telegraph.

Citing reasons for not paying heed to the opposition’s demand of deferring the introduction of bill by a few months, Modi said it was the commitment of the government to put in place a strong Lokayukta at the earliest and there was no point extending the deadline.

He also played down the opposition’s suggestion to wait for the introduction of the Centre’s Lokpal bill instead of going ahead with its own one.

“No point waiting for the central bill. Rather, our bill can become a point of reference for the Centre when it sits to finalise its bill,” said the deputy chief minister.

Modi, who also heads the cabinet sub-committee that has been entrusted the task of fine tuning the draft bill in the light of suggestions given by common people and political parties, said the committee would work with an open mind while going through these suggestion and it would finish its work by November end, so that the final draft of the bill could be put up for cabinet approval in its next meeting likely to be held on December 1 or 2.

The draft Lokayukta Bill, which got a cabinet approval on November 8, talks of setting up a multi-member institution of Lokayukta with one chairman and two members. It talks of bringing the chief minister in the ambit of Lokayukta. The draft bill was put up on government website for soliciting suggestions from people till November 22 and on November 26 government had convened an all party meet to discuss the provisions of the draft bill.