New Delhi, June 17: The UPA allies have expressed support for the government’s tough stance on Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev, bringing relief to a Congress that is keen to strip the duo of the tag of “civil society representatives”.
The Congress core committee met this evening to discuss the situation. Sources said Mamata Banerjee had earlier told senior ministers that “too much importance should not be given to these elements” and that the government should do nothing that could undermine the constitutional scheme.
National Conference leader and Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah has publicly condemned the tactics adopted by the Hazare group and Ramdev.
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has gone a step further to criticise the government’s initial timidity and surrender to the Hazare group. It has said that Hazare and his team should not have been recognised as the sole representatives of civil society.
NCP general secretary Tariq Anwar told The Telegraph: “The decision to constitute a joint drafting committee was flawed. The government should have engaged with this group at an informal level and taken its views to the political parties and Parliament.”
Asked if the NCP supported the government’s tough stand now, Anwar said: “If the government has to take action to restore the sanctity of the constitutional scheme and supremacy of Parliament, we shall support it.”
He added: “We do not accept a situation where laws are made under pressure and a self-styled group without the people’s mandate usurps the role of Parliament. We are not against consultation with members of civil society, but the well-defined democratic processes should be respected.”
The Congress, uneasy about its initial responses to both Ramdev and Hazare, insists that its “sensitivity and responsiveness” was misused and misunderstood as “weakness” on the part of the government.
Ministers and senior party leaders are now objecting to the “civil society versus government” label on the discourse, saying a handful of eminent people led by Hazare did not constitute civil society. They admit that the group had been given exceptional importance but say this should not be seen as a precedent.
This, however, amounts to a change of stance because the minutes of the joint drafting committee meetings clearly identify the Hazare group as representatives of civil society.
Worried about this “one-time exception” being used as a precedent, the government would not mind if the exercise gets derailed. The Centre would like to take the entire credit for the Lokpal bill and other anti-corruption measures. Senior ministers are saying that the new legal framework will be unveiled soon, no matter what the Hazare group does.
The government knows it is up for the long haul, since the Hazare group is certain to cry foul if the Lokpal act does not match its demands.
The Centre is not taking Hazare’s threat of resuming his agitation lightly. The entire government machinery is busy working out a way to prevent a repeat of the April show at Jantar Mantar.