PM Modi will chair meet to pick Lokpal on March 1

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair a crucial meeting on appointment of Lokpal on March 1, the Centre informed the Supreme Court on Friday. The latest push for selecting the anti-corruption ombudsman comes amid sharp attacks by Congress president Rahul Gandhi on the government for not taking action even four years after the Lokpal Act was passed in Parliament.

The meeting next month will also be attended by the leader of the single largest party in the Opposition, the government said, indicating a slight shift in its earlier stand under which it wanted an amendment to the law to replace the term “Leader of the Opposition (LoP)” with “leader of single largest Opposition party” in the list of members of the Lokpal selection panel.

The Lokpal law seeks to bring the Prime Minister, Union ministers and members of Parliament under the purview of the anti-corruption ombudsman.

Accepting the Centre’s submission, the apex court bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and R. Banumathi directed the department of personnel and training (DoPT) to file an affidavit on the outcome of the Prime Minister-chaired meeting by March 5 and posted the matter for hearing on March 6.

The NDA had earlier said that in the Lokpal law enacted during the UPA regime there was no clarity over provisions to be opted for in case of the absence of an LoP.

The Centre had argued that in the absence of an LoP in Parliament, the Lokpal selection committee could not be constituted. In the Lok Sabha, the largest Opposition party is the Congress which has only 44 members and lacks the requisite 10 per cent of the 545 seats to be eligible to nominate an LoP.

The March 1 meeting on Lokpal will come close to Congress president Rahul Gandhi repeatedly attacking the Prime Minister and the BJP for not taking action even four years after the Lokpal Act was passed in Parliament.

Last month, Mr Gandhi had posted an image of a tweet by the Prime Minister from December 2013, and asked him when the false promises will stop. “Are the ‘defenders of democracy’ & ‘harbingers of accountability’ listening?” he had asked.

During the hearing in the apex court on Friday, attorney-general K.K. Venugopal told the bench the selection process delay was due to the death of senior lawyer P.P. Rao, who was one of the members in the panel, in September last year.

The apex court was hearing a contempt petition filed by NGO Common Cause through advocate Prashant Bhushan for not implementing its April 2017 verdict on  appointment of Lokpal.

In April 2017, the apex court had told the Centre to set up the anti-corruption ombudsman under the 2013 law without waiting for Parliament approval of the standing committee’s suggestion for amending the law to include “leader of single largest party” in the place of LoP  in the list of search committee members.