JP hails Lokpal Bill passage

Calls for steps to empower Lokayuktas

Hyderabad: While welcoming the Lokpal Bill, the Lok Satta Party national president Jayaprakash Narayan said that it would be deemed a success only if a dozen corrupt high-level politicians and civil servants were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment and their properties confiscated annually.

In a media statement, he pointed out that such deterrent punishment would send a strong message to the entire nation on the government’s commitment to fight corruption. Jayaprakash Narayan reiterated the Lok Satta Party’s contention that there was no alternative to creation of an independent, empowered Lokayukta at the State-level because that is where corruption is omnipresent and hurts the common man most. Andhra Pradesh, for instance, has only a toothless Lokayukta.

He said that the passage of the Lokpal should be regarded as only a beginning in the war against corruption. The war can become full-fledged only when a stringent law on the lines of the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act (SAFEMA) was in place providing for confiscation of the entire property of the corrupt. The Lokpal law should be supplemented with a law to guarantee government services as a matter of right to every citizen with provision imposition of penalty for failure to deliver services. A Bill drafted by the Lok Satta in this regard, at the instance of the Parliamentary Committee, is before Parliament, he informed.

He also demanded that laws, rules and regulations should be ushered in to ensure that all scarce natural resources like telecom spectrum, iron ore and coal mines are allocated in a competitive and transparent manner.