What is Jan Lokpal Bill

Jan Lokpal Bill

The Jan Lokpal Bill , also referred to as the citizens' ombudsman bill, is a proposed anti-corruption law in India. It was proposed by anti-corruption social activists as a more effective improvement to the original Lokpal bill which is currently being proposed by the the Government of India. The prefix Jan (translation: citizens) was added to signify the fact that these improvements include inputs provided by the ordinary citizens through a activist driven non-governmental public consultation.
The Jan Lokpal Bill aims to effectively deter corruption, redress grievances of citizens and protect whistle-blowers. If made into into law, the bill seeks to create an independent ombudsman body similar to the Election Commission of India called the Lokpal (Sanskrit: protector of the people). It will be empowered to register and investigate complaints of corruption against politicians and bureaucrats without prior government approval. First introduced in 1968, the bill has failed to become law for over four decades.
In 2011, Gandhian rights activist Anna Hazare started a Satyagraha movement by commencing a fast unto death in New Delhi to demand the passing of the bill. The movement attracted attention in the media, and thousands of supporters. Following Hazare's four day hunger strike, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated that the bill would be re-introduced in the 2011 monsoon session of the Parliament.

Accordingly, a committee of five Cabinet Ministers and five social activists attempted to draft a compromise bill merging both the version but failed. The Indian government went on to propose its own version in the parliament, which the activists reject on the grounds of not being sufficiently effective.

Background

The Lokpal bill was first introduced by Shanti Bhushan in 1968[5] and passed in the 4th Lok Sabha in 1969. But it did not get through in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India. Subsequent versions were re-introduced in 1971, 1977, 1985, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and in 2008, but none of them passed.

Renewed calls for the bill arose over resentment of the major differences between the draft 2010 Lokpal Bill prepared by the government and that prepared by the members of the associated activists movement — N. Santosh Hegde, a former justice of the Supreme Court of India; Lokayukta of Karnataka; Shanti Bhushan; Arvind Kejriwal; Prashant Bhushan, a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court; and members of the India Against Corruption movement.
The bill's supporters consider existing laws too weak, full of contradictions and insufficiently empowered to combat corruption. On the other hand, critics of the Jan Lokpal Bill argue that the bill attempts to supercede existing constitutional bodies and attempts to create a super-institution with sweeping powers, which can be dangerous for the future of democracy.