A lot is being said in the Media about the recent crusade by Anna Hazare and team trying to subvert parliamentary process by becoming an extra-parliamentary body and "forcing" the government to agree to a "law" made by itself. The words in quotes in the previous sentence are of note as they are being used by the anti-Hazare brigade to bring what they call as extra-parliamentary processes to light.
The real question is - was the formation of a drafting committee comprising of the Group of Ministers and civil society activists an 'extra-parliamentary' step meant to side-step the parliament? Let's analyse the answer to this question by understanding how a normal law gets passed by the parliament.
Typically, a the process to form a law usually starts with the government ministry planning to form a law - the trigger may be a new requirement, directive by the courts or suo motto recognition by the ministry (minister). The ministry in question then forms a committee study similar bills from other countries / states, bring together thoughts from other ministries or departments within the ministry itself.
Such committees are formed mostly of bureaucrats from the ministry itself but also of experts in the field of the law - the government often solicits services of professors from academic institutions, representatives of the industry bodies (such as CII, FICCI, NASSCOM etc) and other eminent persons to become members such committees.
Now, take a brief look at the Lokpal process - the government has been dilly-dallying on the "proposed" Lokpal bill for the past 40 years. Anna Hazare's team decided that as citizens they had waited enough for a national ombudsman and not only started a fast unto death to force the government to take the bill to parliament, they also in parallel drafted a form of the bill which was legally airtight (thanks to being drafted by the likes of Shanti Bhushan).
But assume for a minute that if the law ministry had ever planned to take the Lokpal bill to the parliament - it would have had formed a committee of bureaucrats and eminent personalities like Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran bedi etc to refine the previous drafts of the bill before it went to parliament. How can then the constitution of a drafting committee be tainted as any attempt to bypass the parliament?
The parliament does NOT draft laws - it only debates and then passes bills presented to it which have already been drafted by the drafting committee. And not just laws - even our constitution was drafted by a 'Drafting Committee' chaired by Dr. Ambedkar and was only debated and then passed by the Constituent Assembly.
Its high time that the media stops playing at the hands of politicians and misleading the public and bring the right picture to the people.
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