New Delhi:
Amid allegations of corruption among his close aides, rookie politician Arvind Kejriwal has said a committee of three retired judges will investigate the charges. If the aides are found guilty of corruption, they will be asked to leave his party, which was founded earlier this month, and is yet to be named.
"There are three people who are repeatedly targeted," Mr Kejriwal said, "Prashant Bhushan, Anjali Damania and Mayank Gandhi." He said that the judges who form an internal "Lokpal" or ombudsman will study their cases starting Monday, and submit their report within three months
The Congress, whose top leaders have been attacked by Mr Kejriwal for permitting or indulging in corruption, was not impressed. "You want to be the accused, judge and prosecutor in the case. This is their sense of jurisprudence," jibed Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari.
The three activists who are under examination said they welcome the investigation; and wished that the trio they have accused of graft - Law Minister Salman Khurshid, BJP president Nitin Gadkari, and Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra - would do the same.
Mayank Gandhi, who heads the Mumbai branch of the civil society group India Against Corruption, has been targeted for helping a real estate company owned by his uncle to land a contract for re-developing a South Mumbai market. The deal has been scrapped for irregularities by the Maharashtra government.
Ms Damania, a Right to Information activist who helped expose a Rs 70,000-crore irrigation scam in Maharashtra, has been accused of acquiring agricultural land at cheap rates from farmers, and then selling it for a huge profit after commercial activity on this and surrounding plots was allowed by local officials.
Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer-activist, has been accused by the Congress of illicitly acquiring land in Noida near Delhi and Himachal Pradesh.
The activists, in rejecting the allegations, also say they are being punished for challenging powerful politicians. They have challenged politicians and political parties accused of corruption to face similar probes. In the last few weeks, they have flanked Mr Kejriwal at press conferences where he has torpedoed Mr Gadkari and Mr Vadra for illicit deals that compromised public interest for windfall profits for their companies.
Yesterday, another activist named YP Singh replicated Mr Kejriwal's routine and held his own press conference, where he said that Mr Kejriwal had suppressed information available to him for over two years that reveals "a mega-scam" orchestrated by union minister Sharad Pawar.
Mr Kejriwal today said Mr Singh's premise was flawed and that he had referred to Mr Pawar's alleged wrong-doing earlier this year. "We raised it, we talked about it...what more should we have done?" he asked.
Mr Kejriwal fronted the India Against Corruption movement with his mentor, 75-year-old Gandhian Anna Hazare. A conglomerate of civil society groups, activists and non-profit organisations supported Anna and Mr Kejriwal as they sparred with the government over its lymphatic attempts to tackle venality. Anna and Mr Kejriwal campaigned for the Lokpal Bill - a new law that creates a national ombudsman or Lokpal to investigate charges of corruption against government servants. The anti-graft legislation has been stalled in Parliament.
Mr Kejriwal said last month that he had no choice but to launch a political party to lobby for the law and to combat corruption. That decision fractionated the India Against Corruption movement. Anna and his supporters have said they cannot support a political party.