New Delhi:
With Anna Hazare proving to be a magnet for middle-class India, the Government is now trying to tunnel its way out of the morass it has landed in through its mismanagement of the activist and his supporters.
While the Gandhian pulled close to 10,000 people into Ramlila Maidan where he has launched his 15-day protest against corruption, some in the Congress publicly admitted it was a mistake to have arrested Anna on Tuesday in an attempt to prevent his hunger fast and demonstration.
"Yes it was wrong," said Sandeep Dikshit, a Congress MP from Delhi whose mother, Sheila, is Chief Minister. "If the Delhi Police thought there may have a disturbance in public order, they could have detained him."
The Government has stressed repeatedly that Anna's arrest was decided by the police, provoking the Opposition's Aun Jaitely to ask in parliament whether it's the police or the PM who's running the county.
In the last few days, the Congress has tripped repeatedly over the Anna issue. Last Sunday, a spokesperson accused him of corruption "from head to toe." Another spokesperson suggested the US is backing Anna's movement to destabilize the Government. But it was the decision to send Anna to the high-security Tihar Jail that may have been the biggest error of judgment. The public perception of Tihar is of a jail for the deadliest of criminals; lately, it has hosted politicians accused of India's biggest scams - men like Suresh Kalmadi and A Raja whose proximity to Anna in prison was seen as a gross insult to the 74-year-old activist. Again, the Government deflected the blame on the Delhi Police.
But as the party stumbles from one public error to another, many within the Congress are questioning why leaders from Maharashtra are not being deputed to engage with Team Anna for a possible truce.
Union minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, for example, dealt with 15 threats of hunger fasts from Anna when he was Chief Minister of Maharashtra. None of those situations turned into the sort of spectacle that the Government has now brought upon itself.
The Opposition points out that the Government first invited Anna and his associates to help draft the Lokpal Bill, which is aimed at sterilizing public office from corruption. When Team Anna's agenda for the bill proved to be different from the Government's, the activists' suggestions were discarded. "You led them up the garden path and then you deserted them," charged Mr Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha earlier this week, salting the wound. Because the Opposition was not invited either to negotiate with Team Anna or to examine the bill that was being drafted, the Government finds little support for its charge that by challenging the Bill, Team Anna is undermining parliament.
So the Government now hopes to use Anna's associates from Maharashtra as a conduit for negotiations with the activist. The priority is to convince Anna to end his fast soon. He is also likely to be told that a parliamentary committee working on the Lokpal Bill would like to meet with him about his suggestions.
Law Minister Salman Khursheed today said that the Lokpal Bill introduced in parliament cannot be amended now. "It's only the Parliamentary Standing Committee that suggests amendments," he added. "The Standing committee can substantially change bills," said Mr Dikshit, indicating a possible softening of stand.