PM acted on Anna issue after Sonia's intervention

Highly placed sources in the Congress party state that on the Anna Hazare issue, the government began moving only after party chief Sonia Gandhi's intervention made through Rahul Gandhi.

Sonia Gandhi is out of country at an undisclosed destination taking medical treatment for an undisclosed ailment. However, no leader is ready to speak on record about her. 

The sources also claim that she made it clear that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should write to Anna Hazare and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee should be the main negotiator to handle the agitation and hold talks with the fasting protester to bring the ongoing crisis to an end.

Sources say that it was after that the government began moving and contact was established with the Anna camp.

The letter sent by the prime minister to Hazare urging him to end the fast was basically drafted on advise by Pranab Mukherjee and was cleverly worded, which made no promises but expressed concern.

The letter mentioned that the government would ask the standing committee to look at the Jan Lokpal Bill and consider it along with the other bills which have been sent to them.

The standing committee already has the Jan Lokpal bill. Still, the PM's offer is in the nature of a face saver for Anna Hazare and his team.

The PM had a long meeting on Tuesday morning with Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi, who is now the chairman of the standing committee on law, justice and personnel.

The Lokpal Bill has been referred to the standing committee and the committee will meet on September 1 to discuss the bill which has been introduced in the Parliament. 

Sources in the committee said that already a large number of versions of the bill, including the Jan Lokpal Bill, have been sent to the committee. Apart from that the committee is also free to source inputs from anywhere in the world and can make whatever changes they want to the existing draft which was prepared by senior ministers and then approved by the Union Cabinet.

Anna Hazare and company have put a deadline of August 30 to pass the Jan Lokpal bill, but the government has assured them the deadline is meaningless and cannot be implemented and has instead given them a time limit of three months with which to pass the bill. In fact the government has said it can be ready only by 26 January next year.

Later in the evening, Rahul Gandhi had a meeting with the PM in his room in the Parliament House, after which the two of them drove away together in the PM's car to 7, Race Course Road where the discussions continued on how to bring the agitators on board. 

Earlier in the day, Arvind Kejriwal met the Union law minister Salman Khursheed at the Pandara Road residence of Sandeep Dikshit to discuss the best way of moving forward.

The PM also called an all party meeting at his residence on Wednesday at 3 pm to discuss the issue. He also met Sharad Pawar, the Nationalist Congress Party chief, who is regarded as a mine of information on Anna Hazare.

So far the PM had not bothered to take either his allies or other political parties on board as the issue had continued to linger for the last eight days as the nationally televised fast became the talk of the entire nation, further putting the government and the Congress in the dock.

It was also decided to hold a meeting of the general body of the Congress Parliamentary Party on August 25, where Pranab Mukherjee would address the party MPs and brief them on the entire Anna Hazare episode.

A number of party MPs, particularly those from Mumbai, like Sanjay Nirupam and Priya Dutt, have been doing a balancing act and taking a partially 'pro-Anna line' asking for a stronger Lokpal Bill, as sources close to them said that the MPs claimed that they have to go back to the people and fight elections.

This is the dilemma of many Lok Sabha MPs in the party who say that the longer a solution is deferred, the bigger would be their headache in answering questions of both the people and other political opponents.

Sources say that after the mess up by the government on the first day when Anna Hazare was arrested and then taken to Tihar Jail, and later released in the evening after a strong intervention by Rahul Gandhi, the PM and his team had taken no steps to end the logjam and restore normalcy.

No contact was made with the Anna Hazare team and instead Home Minister P Chidambaram was seen to be justifying what had happened.

A senior leader said that earlier the PM's complaint used to be that he could not act independently as there was too much interference from 10, Janpath. But the leader alleged that this time around there was no '10, Janpath' to interference.

But he failed to handle the first big political crisis which came his way in the absence of Sonia Gandhi and finally she had to again intervene to bring matters back on track.

What is a matter of intense speculation in the Congress party is why the PM did not involve senior leaders like Pranab Mukherjee and A K Anotony and others to diffuse the ongoing agitation initially and instead relied on Chidambaram as the main points man.

Anyone who approached Pranab Mukherjee to ask about the ongoing agitation and what needed to be done, the curt reply was, "Ask Chidambaram".

The same was the response from other ministers who said they knew nothing, and that all queries should be directed to the home minister.