Jan Lokpal movement

[sumishi]

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Great comment!



Meanwhile, [url="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2523121.ece?homepage=true"]Govt. agrees to disclose audio recordings of Lokpal Committee[/url] : The Hindu, October 9, 2011[/size][/font]



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The government has agreed to make public the audio recordings of proceedings of the Joint Drafting Committee constituted to draft the Lokpal Bill. Here, civil society members Anna Hazare, Shanthi Bhushan and Santosh Hegde are seen during the first meeting of the panel at North Block in New Delhi. File photo

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[size="3"]Relenting from its earlier stance, the Department of Personnel and Training agreed to make public the audio recordings of proceedings of the Joint Drafting Committee constituted to draft the Lokpal Bill



The government has agreed to make public the audio recordings of proceedings of the Joint Drafting Committee constituted to frame the Lokpal Bill.



The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had earlier refused to bring out the deliberations of the Committee in public domain though the civil society members had wanted the proceedings to be made available soon after the meetings.



The Joint Drafting Committee, comprising five members of Team Anna and an equal number of Cabinet Ministers, was formed to finalise the draft of the Lokpal Bill earlier this year. The committee, constituted on April 10, included Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister P Chidambaram, the then Law Minister Veerappa Moily, Telecom and Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal and Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khursheed.



The civil society members included Anna Hazare, Justice N Santosh Hedge, Shanti Bhushan, Prashant Bhushan and Arvind Kejriwal.



Responding to a query filed under the Right to Information filed by activist S.C.Agrawal, the DoPT has said that the audio proceeding of the meetings of the Joint Drafting Committee for drafting the Lokpal Bill have now become available. ``There are nine CDs and you may deposit copying fee of Rs. 450 so that copies of the CDs can be supplied to you,’’ Amarjit Singh, under secretary of DoPT has said in the response.



While welcoming the decision, Mr Agrawal said he would deposit the money under protest on Monday because information to a RTI query has to be provided free of cost if the response does not come within 30 days. He had filed the RTI application in June.



Earlier, responding to an RTI query, the DoPT had said that they require the nod of Law Ministry to make public audio recordings of the close-door meetings between the government and Team Anna.



"Joint Drafting Committee (JDC) was constituted by notification of the Ministry of Law and Justice wherein JDC was supposed to evolve its own procedure. It may be further noted that the matter relating to RTI queries on audio- recordings of JDC has been referred to Department of Legal Affairs in Ministry of Law and Justice for clarification," an RTI response from DoPT had said.[/size]

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