Mumbai: Amid allegations of corruption among his close aides rookie politician Arvind Kejriwal today said that 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.
Mr Kejriwal also said that an email address will be released to the public. "Anyone with a complaint against a member of the party can mail it here," he said.
Soon after Mr Kejriwal made his announcement, two of the three aides - Mayank Gandhi and Anjali Damania - held a press conference to say all their dealings were aboveboard. "Apart from the internal Lokpal, the government can investigate us and we are ready to face double punishment if found guilty," Mr Gandhi said and Ms Damania reiterated. They also suggested that now that the anti-corruption activists had initiated this move, it would be advisable to await the judges' verdict on the allegations against them. All documents, which they said were in the public domain anyway, would be made available to the ombudsman, they added.
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 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.
"Complete investigation will happen, we welcome all the allegations," Mr Bhushan said.
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 BJP president Nitin Gadkari and Robert Vadra who is a businessman and son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi 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. (Read)
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.
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