Back words by actions, Pranab tells Advani on Lokpal Bill

Thiruvnanthapuram, Apr 10 (PTI) Indian Finance
Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday hit back at the main
opposition party, BJP leader L K Advani over remarks against
the government on Lokpal Bill, asking why NDA failed to get it
enacted while in power and said UPA was ready to do away with
referring the bill to Parliament's Standing Committee as per
norms if the Opposition agreed.
The Lokpal Bill is a draft anti-corruption bill drawn
up by prominent civil society activists seeking the
appointment of a Jan Lokpal, an independent body that would
investigate corruption cases.
"What had Advani done? What prevented him from getting
the Lokpal bill passed when he was the Home Minister when the
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in power?" Mukherjee
asked and asserted that United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
Government was ready to get the Lokpal Bill passed in the next
session of Parliament if the Opposition cooperated with it.
Responding to queries on Advani's demand that the
Lokpal Bill should be introduced and passed in the next
session of Parliament itself, Mukherjee said, "We are glad to
get it passed if the opposition co-operated for it.
"I really welcome the suggestion. BJP is the principal
opposition party. If he (Advani) prevails upon his members
we will be too glad to get it passed without sending it to
the Standing Committee. But instead of making announcements
from the platform, let him ensure that his members in the
Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha will co-operate with us,"
Mukherjee told reporters at the KPCC headquarters here.
Attacking Advani for dubbing the UPA government as
"the most corrupt ever seen by independent India", he sought
to know what the BJP-led NDA Government had done for the
enactment of the Lokpal Bill when it was in power from 1998 to
2004.
On yoga guru Baba Ramdev's criticism about nomination
of father-son lawyer duo Shanti and Prashant Bhushan as civil
society members in the Lokpal drafting panel, he said
these names were proposed by activist Anna Hazare himself.
"The agreement between the campaigners and the
government was that the the nominees of the panel would be
decided on 50:50 ratio. It was agreed that the government
nominees would be selected by the Prime Minister and the civil
group representatives by Hazare himself," he said.