Today in Cabinet: Lokpal Bill, PM in it

The Cabinet will take up for approval today the new Lokpal Bill draft, which proposes that the Prime Minister be brought under its ambit. Th...

The Cabinet will take up for approval today the new Lokpal Bill draft, which proposes that the Prime Minister be brought under its ambit. The draft, however, excludes the president from the Lokpal purview.

The Cabinet also plans to do away with the NDA government’s repeal of the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act. The Assam-specific Act was, in the NDA view, ineffective in expelling foreigners from the state but obviously the Congress-led government thinks otherwise.

The Lokpal draft, if approved, would mark the ninth attempt to introduce the Bill in Parliament. In June 2003, the NDA government had approved the Bill to include the PM and his office within the Lokpal’s purview.

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The Bill now requires a simple majority in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to become an Act—one of the promises in the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme.

The IMDT Act was introduced by the then Congress government in 1983 following a protracted agitation by the All Assam Students Union (AASU), seeking to throw out all foreigners from the state.

Subsequently, an attempt by the H D Deve Gowda government to repeal the Act was thwarted by the Congress that was supporting the United Front government from the outside.

As many as 16 tribunals were set for detecting illegal migrants that could trace just 9,000 Bangladeshi infiltrators. The actual numbers deported under the act stands at 1,500.

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The poor figures of illegal migrants detected and deported are widely believed to be because the onus of proving a person an illegal migrant rested on the complainant.