In a major development, the Indian government on Sunday agreed to make the audio recordings public of the proceedings of the Joint Drafting Committee constituted to draft the anti-corruption Lokpal Bill.
The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had earlier refused to bring out the deliberations of the Committee into the public domain.
Earlier, responding to an RTI query, the DoPT had said that they require permission from the Law Ministry to publicly release the audio recordings of the closed-door meetings between the government and Team Anna. Ironically, in its recent reply, the department seems to have changed its mind and asked activist S. C. Agrawal to deposit Rs 450 as additional fee for providing the audio recordings of the deliberations.
“The audio recordings of the meetings of the Joint Drafting Committee for drafting the Lokpal Bill have now become available with the undersigned. There are nine CDs and you may deposit a copying fee of Rs 450 so that copies of the CDs can be supplied to you,” the Under Secretary of DoPT, wrote today.