Pranab meets Lalu, Mulayam; PM says he's confident of numbers

Delhi/Mumbai : Ahead of the Lokpal debate, which began in the morning, Congress troubleshooter-in-chief Pranab Mukherjee met with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad, two leaders whose support is crucial for the government as it tries to push the Lokpal Bill through parliament. Glossing over the  complex math the government needs to do, the Prime Minister said in parliament to reporters today that if the UPA were not confident that it has the numbers it needs, it would not have introduced the bill in parliament. Dr Manmohan Singh will participate in today's debate.

In Mumbai, 74-year-old Anna Hazare is on a three-day hunger strike. His activists say the government has deliberately introduced a Lokpal Bill that gives the new anti-corruption agency no powers to check venality.

Eight hours have been set aside for a discussion today in the Lok Sabha for  bill which creates the Lokpal, a national anti-corruption agency, and another that seeks to give it constitutional status.  For the former, a simple majority is required, which the government has in the Lok Sabha, but not in the Rajya Sabha. For the latter, a two-third majority is required since a constitutional amendment is needed. In the Lok Sabha, the government has the support of 277 of the 543 MPs; in the Rajya Sabha, it has the support of 94 of a total of 243 MPs. So parties like Mulayam's Samajwadi and Lalu's RJD  are important links.

The Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making the Disclosures Bill, 2010 (popularly known as The Whistle-blowers' Bill) will also be debated today.

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It will be a high-tension day , with the BJP planning to move 37 amendments and the Left another 11.  The BJP and  the Left want the new Lokpal - to have an investigative wing, and for the CBI to be freed from government control.  The BJP has strong objections to two sections of the bill in its current form - the party says that a minority quota for the nine members of the Bill is unconstitutional; so is the provision that forces states to adopt the Lokpal model.  The BJP says this violates the federal principles of the constitution.

The Congress and the BJP have both issued a whip making it mandatory for their MPs to be in Parliament.

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Before he headed to Parliament, senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha explained the BJP's opposition to large chunks of the bill.  "This legislation needs a lot of changes," he said, "the institution (Lokpal) must be able to fight this scourge of corruption in our country."

Undeterred, the government last night said the bill is a "fine piece of legislation" -words of the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal who asked opposition parties to help the government pass the bill.

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Like so many other parties, Mr Sinha said that Anna Hazare's fast in Mumbai will not overshadow the political debate today.  He said the merits of the bill must be considered independently and "Parliament should consider it most objectively irrespective of whether Anna is fasting outside."

Anna's aides say he is not well but has rejected their request to cancel his fast.  At Mumbai's MMRDA Grounds, Anna will be flanked by his activists who believe the government has betrayed the country by introducing a Lokpal Bill that cannot succeed in achieving its goal - combating systematic corruption. So Tuesday will, for India, be a tale of two cities. In Delhi, the opposition will challenge large sections of the bill. In Mumbai, the police expects more than 50,000 people to congregate at the MMRDA Ground, where Anna will play host.  And on December 30, he will launch a civil disobedience "jail bharo" campaign. Online, more than 1.37 lakh Indians have offered to participate.

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Mumbai Police are already making arrangements to turn the Kalina Ground, close to the MMRDA Ground, into a makeshift jail for if the protest spills over to the jail-bharo campaign on December 30.