Be it Gandhi Sanghralaya or A N Sinha Institute or various educational campuses everywhere citizens are busy discussing, formally or informally, the draft Bill of the Bihar government and Nitish Kumar’s diatribe against Team Anna. People are wondering as to why this chief minister, who was till recently the darling of Team Anna has fallen from the grace.

While renowned lawyer Basant Chaudhary feels that the draft was a hurriedly prepared document his academic friend Prof Nawal Kishore Chaudhary of Patna University goes further ahead by stating: “No it is not just a hurriedly prepared draft, but there is a method in madness.” Not only the two, but academics like Prof Mahendra Narayan Karna and Prof A K P Yadav strongly condemned the way the chief minister had usurped all the power to constitute selection committee to appoint the Lokayukta.

On the other hand RTI and Kosi flood activist Mahendra Yadav while talking to BiharTimes dubbed the state government draft bill as The Bihar Lipayukta Bill, social activist Satya Narayan Madan called for the imeediate removal of provision for the punishment of whistle blower(s). Almost all of them said that the whistle blower(s) should be protected as in the case of Uttarakhand rather than jailed or fined on the plea that they have levelled false allegations.

One of them, on the condition of anonymity, told BiharTimes as to how RTI activists in Bihar are being implicated in false cases though the state was among the first to take step in this direction. Others too expressed the similar sentiment.

However, social activist and CEO of Sahulat, an NGO, Arshad Ajmal, has a different take on the issue. While talking to BiharTimes he welcomed Nitish Kumar’s statement in which he roundly criticized Arvind Kejriwal. “I am strongly against corruption but I totally disagree with the fascist way Team Anna has been conducting the agitation in last several months. This is not the way you build pressure. Nitish had at least cut them to size.”

Basant Chaudhary and Prof A K P Yadav have a word of praise for the Bill passed by Uttarakhand. The former said that the Nitish just want to take political mileage in every move he takes. He wants to be first on the issue and get the story published in New York Times, Washington Post and Time magazine.

While most academics strongly criticized the print media for presenting the story in such a way as if the draft Bill is something really revolutionary Satya Narayan Madan said that it was only after reading the draft Bill on the website that the people came to know the real design of the Nitish Kumar government. “The state already had a Lokayukta for last several decades. What is the use of a weak Lokayukta like the one we have for the last about four decades,” he added. Women’s rights activist Kanchan Bala too had the similar thing to say.

Prof Karna said that the arbitrary order of the bureaucrats has not been covered in the draft Bill.
All of them were at least unanimous on one count: over the constitution of the selection committee for the appointment of Lokayukta. It will have the chief minister, a minister of his cabinet, the outgoing Lokayukta, one eminent citizen appointed by the chief minister, two judges of the high court and the leader of opposition. In that way three of the seven persons in the panel would be directly appointed by the chief minister, besides the chief minister himself. Thus four of the seven would be government nominee.

“In today’s circumstances even the leader of the opposition can be pressurized in Bihar,” said one of those interviewed who wished not to be quoted. He said that Nitish Kumar had made the provision for one minister as he wanted to assure a berth for his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi in that panel.
Basant Chaudhary said that though the Jan Lokpal Bill has flaws it does not give so much power to the Prime Minister in the appointment of Lokpal at the Centre. Similarly, the Uttarkhand Bill had not given so much power to the chief minister in that state.

He dubbed the move of the legislature of Bihar to give power to the Governor to remove Lokayukta and said that the move is unconstitutional. It should in fact be in the hands of the high court.

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