Ex-Lokayukta to head Anna’s anti-graft movement in North

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 20

Eminent social activist and anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare has picked up former Haryana Lokayukta Justice Pritam Pal to head his campaign against corruption in North India. The campaign will formally be launched in Haryana on March 4 from Kurukshstra.

Justice Pritam Pal, a social activist, will be the coordinator for Anna Hazare’s Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Andolan in North India to prepare the ground for ‘final satyagraha’ against corruption at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi from March 23. Noted jurist and social activist Santosh Hegde is coordinating the movement in South India.

Justice Pritam Pal’s non-political outfit against social evils — Social Justice Front—is currently mobilising the right-minded people from different walks of life for the March 4 Kurukshetra meeting as part of Anna’s Jan Andolan.

Justice Pritam Pal asserted that about one-third of the lawmakers in state Assemblies and Parliament faced criminal charges which portended ill for the democracy. “Only ‘jan shakti (people’s power) can cleanse the politics of various ills such as criminalisation and corruption. I have decided to work selflessly for Anna Hazare’s Jan Andolan and urge all right-thinking persons to join this movement to leave a better world for generations to come,” Justice Pritam Pal told The Tribune here today.

Justice Pritam Pal met Anna Hazare in New Delhi on February 11 where modalities for the launch of the movement from Kurushetra were worked out.

Anna Hazare will begin his ‘satyagraha’ against corruption at Ramlila Maidan from March 23. Before that he would take soil from the National Martyrs Memorial at Hussainiwala. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were cremated there on 23 March 1931.