The government has now agreed to disclose to the public the audio recordings of the proceedings of the Joint Drafting Committee constituted to draft the Jan Lokpal Bill.
The Department of Personnel and Training had earlier refused to bring out the deliberations of the Committee in the public domain.
The Joint Drafting Committee, comprising of five members of Team Anna and an equal number of Cabinet Ministers, was formed so as to finalise the draft of the Lokpal Bill.
Earlier, while responding to an RTI query, DoPT had said that they require the nod of Law Ministry to make public audio recordings of the close-door meetings between the government and Team Anna.
An RTI response from DoPT had said that the Joint Drafting Committee was constituted by notification of the Ministry of Law and Justice wherein JDC was supposed to evolve its own procedure. It may be further noted that the matter relating to RTI queries on audio-recordings of JDC has been referred to the Department of Legal Affairs in Ministry of Law and Justice for clarifictaion.
In its recent reply, the department seems to have changed its mind and asked the activist S.C Agarwal to deposit Rs 450 as additional fees for providing the audio recordings of the deliberations.
Under Secretary of DoPT, Amarjith Singh wrote that the audio recordings of the meetings of the Joint Drafting Committee of the Lokpal Bill have now become available with the undersigned. To get the audio recordings, an additional fee of Rs. 450 has to be paid and in total nine CD's are available.
News reported by AR for Newsvision
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