Kiran Bedi, Prashant Bhushan

New Delhi, Oct. 28: Allegations against key members could force the Anna Hazare-led India Against Corruption to disband its core committee.

The 24-member committee includes former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, who is being accused of corruption, and lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who has courted controversy with his statement in favour of plebiscite in Kashmir.

Hazare and his close lieutenants, who smell a conspiracy by “corrupt forces” to target individual team members, worry that Bhushan and Bedi have become liabilities and that Arvind Kejriwal, the chief strategist, could go the same way.

The former IRS officer has missed an income-tax department deadline to pay Rs 9.27 lakh for violating service rules. Questions have also been raised on his NGO’s funding.

Vishwas Kumar, the ever-present stage manager at Hazare’s widely televised hunger strikes in April at Jantar Mantar and at Ramlila Maidan in August, in a letter to the Gandhian today asked him to “suspend the current core committee” arguing that corrupt forces were trying to derail the movement by targeting individuals.

Kumar is a committee member and a confidant of Kejriwal.

The decision to disband the committee, conceived as the movement’s decision-making body, could be made as early as tomorrow when it meets in the Ghaziabad office of the NGO Kejriwal runs.

Medha Patkar and Justice (retired) Santosh Hegde will not attend the meeting because of prior engagements. Hazare, who is on a maun vrat since October 16 on health grounds, will be absent. Bhushan is also unlikely to attend.

Two members, waterman Rajinder Singh and land rights activist P.V. Rajagopal, had recently quit the committee alleging they were not consulted on important decisions, including the campaign against the Congress in the Hisar bypoll. The Hisar decision was also criticised by Justice Hegde.

Rajinder today said Hazare had deviated from his objective by supporting a “corrupt” candidate in Hisar and added his team was full of “arrogant” people, with Bedi and Kejriwal the “most arrogant”.

“Hazare’s close aides in Maharashtra have convinced him he is the face of the movement and, to ensure his campaign’s longevity, should distance himself and the movement from some members who are now proving to be inconvenient fellow travellers,” a source said.

In his letter, Kumar too argued that Hazare was the unrivalled face of the anti-corruption movement and he should consider all the 1.21 billion people of India as members of his “hardcore committee”.

After its demand for a Jan Lokpal, the movement would take up “right to reject” and “right to recall” and other laws to bring about systemic changes.

“At each of these fronts you would need a new ‘core committee’ and a new ‘Team Anna’ who are willing, committed and prepared,” Kumar wrote.

Agencies quoted Hazare’s official blog writer, journalist Raju Parulekar, as saying the core committee would be revamped. “The new outfit would aim at not playing the game of election but to change the rules of the game of election,” he said, stressing it would be “apolitical”.

Congress sources said disbanding of Team Anna was only a ruse to deflect criticism and an effort by Hazare and Kejriwal to concentrate all decision-making power with themselves.

Notice to Bedi NGOs

The income tax department has sent notices to two Bedi-run NGOs asking if they were engaged in commercial activity. Bedi, who runs India Vision Foundation and Navjyoti India Foundation, denied either was engaged in any activity “for profit”.