New Delhi, November 19
Ahead of the winter session of Parliament scheduled to start on Thursday, a Rajya Sabha select committee today suggested that setting up Lokayukta in states could be delinked from creating the Lokpal at the Centre. It also recommended steps to make the Central Bureau of Investigation more independent.

A Rajya Sabha select committee was asked this June to examine the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill in the wake of serious differences over various provisions, including setting up a Lokayukta in states along with the Lokpal through a Central legislation. However, several parties, including some allies of the ruling UPA, criticised the provision as an attack on the federal structure.

The committee, sources said, suggested that states can have a set-up on the lines of Lokpal within one year of commencement of the proposed legislation.

The Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha last December amid a wave of protests by civil society groups demanding a Lokpal and Lokayuktas to fight graft in public life. However, it got stuck in the Rajya Sabha after the House was adjourned abruptly. Later, the Bill was referred to a Select Committee headed by Satyavrat Chaturvedi.

Sources said the committee that met here to adopt its draft report is understood not to have made any recommendation in the provision relating to “reservation”.

The original provision said not less than 50 per cent members of the Lokpal would be from SC, ST, OBC, minorities and women.

The Prime Minister, who is sought to be covered by the Bill, would be exempted from the provisions of the proposed law on issues such as external and internal security, atomic energy, international relations and public order.

In order to reduce government control over the CBI, the report recommends that its chief be selected by a panel consisting of the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Chief Justice of India and that the post have a fixed tenure.

Aiming to grant greater autonomy to the CBI in prosecution, the committee suggested that the head of the prosecution wing function under the CBI director and not the government. This director should be appointed by the Central Vigilance Commissioner, it said. The CBI chief and the head of prosecution should have a fixed tenure.

Meanwhile, CPM MP on the panel, KN Balagopal, is understood to have given a separate note suggesting that the Lokpal be allowed to probe graft cases in projects being executed under the public-private partnership mode, corporate sector and where private sector is associated in extraction/use of natural resources.