The Government has sought the advice of the Law Ministry on making public the audio recordings of the proceedings of the joint drafting committee on the Lokpal Bill constituted after Anna Hazare’s fast in April.
The committee comprising five members of team Anna and five cabinet ministers was formed to finalise the draft of the Lokpal Bill and the audio recordings of the proceedings were made.
“Joint drafting committee 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 the Department of Legal Affairs in Ministry of Law and Justice for clarification,” an RTI response from Department of Personnel and Training has said.
Activist Mr S.C. Agrawal had sought to know from the Personnel Department the audio recordings of the proceedings of the committee in the form of compact CDs.
The department said it has posted the details of proceedings in the form of minutes on its website but the audio recordings were not available with it.
The committee constituted on April 10 included the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, the Home Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, the then Law Minister, Mr Veerappa Moily, the Telecom and HRD Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, and the then Minority Affairs Minister, Mr Salman Khurshid.
The civil society members included Mr Anna Hazare, Mr Justice N. Santosh Hedge, Mr Shanti Bhushan, Mr Prashant Bhushan and Mr Arvind Kejriwal.