Senior govt officials meet to give final touch to Swaraj Bill

NEW DELHI: Senior government officials today held a meeting at Delhi Secretariat here to finalise modalities of Swaraj Bill, which intends to devolve power directly to the people to curb corruption at the local level.

"A meeting of 25 secretaries from various departments took place to hold discussion on Swaraj Bill," Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said.

Former chief secretary of Madhya Pradesh S C Behar, who has been entrusted with the responsibility to draft AAP government's Swaraj Bill, said,"The draft is in its final stage and it will be ready in the next few days. We have received advices from all the concerned government departments in this regard."

"The draft of the bill will soon be handed over to the government to be discussed in the Cabinet meeting," Behar added.

Quelling the fear that AAP members will take over mohalla sabhas, Behar said, "Under the bill, mohalla sabhas are being made strong, however, it is not that party members will take their control.

Behar had earlier said the Bill was being drafted keeping in mind three principles.

First, he had explained, is making citizens empowered to solve their problems on their own, which is 'direct democracy.'

"Here people directly will have the power to take decisions and solve problems on their own and mohallasabha is a model of that," he had said.

Second, he had said, "where this direct democracy cannot be implemented, participatory democracy comes to the scene where there is large public participation to solve issues and problems. The idea here is to bridge the gap between government, authorities and people."

"And where both these are not possible, there will be accountable representative democracy. Under this system, the person in charge will be accountable on a regular basis and not after five, ten years," he had explained.