Indian political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi gestures after he is arrested by the police on charges of mocking the Indian constitution in his drawings, in Mumbai, India, Sunday, Sept. 9, 2012. Police arrested Trivedi on sedition charges after his drawings criticizing government corruption irked the ruling Congress party. — Photo by AP

NEW DELHI: India police have arrested a political cartoonist on sedition charges after his drawings criticizing rampant corruption irked political leaders.     

A magistrate in the city of Mumbai on Sunday ordered Aseem Trivedi held for a week for questioning about a complaint that the cartoonist had mocked the Indian constitution in his drawings.

Trivedi’s cartoons lampooning widespread corruption among Indian politicians were displayed at New Delhi protest last year by the anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare.

Students, opposition politicians and free speech advocates protested Monday that Trivedi’s arrest showed politicians’ growing intolerance for criticism.

A university professor was arrested recently in the state of West Bengal for emailing a spoof caricaturing the chief minister.

Indian activist Anna Hazare(above) , who galvanised the country last year with his hunger strikes against corruption.  — File Photo by Reuters

NEW DELHI: Indian activist Anna Hazare, who galvanised the country last year with his hunger strikes against corruption, began a new fast Sunday to press demands for a crackdown on official graft.

Hazare and his supporters want parliament to strengthen a pending anti-corruption bill and the creation of a special team to probe possible graft allegations against 15 ministers, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The 75-year-old former army truck driver threatened to fast until death if the demands are not met.

“I am confident that… the people of my country will not let me die. I draw my strength and confidence from you,” Hazare told several thousand supporters gathered at a popular protest site in central New Delhi.

Some senior members of the Hazare campaign had already started hunger strikes at the same venue four days before.

Hazare became an unlikely national hero last August when he led countrywide protests that tapped into a rich seam of public anger at India’s endemic corruption.

During a 12-day hunger strike, he was feted as a latter-day Mahatma Gandhi and mobbed at a triumphal procession through the capital New Delhi.

Singh’s government, tainted by a series of graft scandals, was caught out by the outpouring of public emotion and forced to negotiate with the Hazare campaign, which it previously condemned as manipulative and undemocratic.

Although around 4,000 supporters turned out Sunday as Hazare began his latest fast, observers say the campaign has lost much of its momentum since the heady days of last summer.

The media has also been less supportive, suggesting that Hazare risks overstepping in insisting that parliament adopts his campaign’s input for the new anti-corruption bill.

“Anna and his cohorts must realise that they are only a pressure group.They cannot hold parliament to ransom. Their primary job is to keep the issue of corruption in play,” the Times of India said in a recent editorial.

“Using fasts to arm-twist the government is against the very spirit of democracy and amounts to political blackmail,” it said.

Hazare’s direct attacks on Prime Minister Singh and the ruling Congress party have also led to accusations that he and his campaign organisers were pursuing a political agenda.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. — Photo by AFP/File

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has denounced fresh allegations that he turned a blind eye to corruption within his government and has vowed to resign if any wrongdoing is proved against him.

Singh reacted angrily to accusations from the anti-corruption movement headed by veteran campaigner Anna Hazare, which prepared a list of graft charges against 15 ministers including the premier.

“If there is even an iota of truth in it, then I will give up my public career and the country can give me any punishment,” Singh told reporters late Tuesday on his airplane back to New Delhi from Myanmar.

Singh, a media-shy academic who came to power in 2004, previously enjoyed a blemish-free reputation within India’s turbulent political world but his administration has been hit by a series of corruption scandals in recent years.

“You don’t need to take bribes yourself in order to be guilty of corruption offences,” Prashant Bhushan, a prominent member of Hazare’s anti-graft movement told the CNN-IBN news channel on Tuesday evening.

“We do not believe that the prime minister takes bribes himself but it is also clear to us that he is allowing a thoroughly corrupt cabinet to be in place… and allowing his cabinet ministers to loot the public exchequer.”

The latest accusations raised by Hazare’s supporters focus on coal deposits that were given away by the government rather than sold at auction.

The allegations come as the government struggles to limit damage from the “2G scam” in which the then telecoms minister A. Raja is accused of handing out second-generation mobile phone licenses to select firms at knock-down prices.

“This is precisely what the prime minister appears to have done prima facie in the allocations of these coal blocks,” Bhushan, a high-profile Delhi lawyer, said.

Graft has become a hot political issue in India due to a string of high-profile scandals including the “2G scam” and contracts awarded for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

Anna Hazare galvanised millions of people last year when he held a 12-day anti-corruption hunger strike in New Delhi that triggered huge rallies of support across the country.

Many Indians complain that corruption is a part of daily life and occurs in all transactions, from getting a driving license to property sales. Graft is also seen as a major deterrent to international investment in India.

Hazare has demanded the creation of a powerful anti-corruption watchdog organization. That legislation is currently stalled in Parliament.— (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

NEW DELHI: A prominent anti-corruption crusader in India is on a daylong hunger strike to protest the killings of a slew of activists across the country.

Hundreds of supporters gathered in the Indian capital to support Anna Hazare on Sunday.

Hazare said his fast was to draw attention to the lack of government protection to corruption whistle blowers.

Over the last few years several people, some of them government officials, have been killed while trying to expose the country’s endemic corruption.

Hazare has fasted four times already to demand the creation of a powerful anti-corruption watchdog organization. That legislation is currently stalled in Parliament.

Indian social activist Anna Hazare gesture to supporters during his second day of his fast at the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) recreation ground in Mumbai on December 28, 2011.—AFP Photo

MUMBAI: Indian anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare called off his latest hunger strike on Wednesday but signalled he would step up his political efforts to turn voters against the ruling party and government.

Hazare began his fast on Tuesday to demand that the government pass a strong new anti-graft law that would create a powerful ombudsman tasked with identifying and prosecuting corrupt public officials.

“Today I will break the fast,” the frail 74-year-old told supporters in Mumbai. “We will discuss the future strategy to launch our fight against corruption.” Doctors had urged the former army driver to call off his hunger strike because of low blood pressure and dehydration.

Hazare and his supporters maintain that a draft law passed by the lower house of parliament late on Tuesday is weak and ineffectual as it shields the country’s federal police from scrutiny.

He had previously threatened to begin a campaign of civil disobedience immediately after his fast if his demands were not met.

He said his supporters should be ready to defy the police and court arrest, but he declined to give details.

“We have to save this country. Every one of you should be ready to go to the jail. The day the jails are full of people, government will have to give in,” he said.

Hazare shot to national fame in August after holding a 12-day fast in the capital New Delhi, which galvanised millions across the country disaffected with endemic corruption in everyday life.

Crowds have been thin on the ground for his second national campaign, however, with no more than several thousand in Mumbai for the second day of his protest, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.

In a sign of his increasingly bitter battle with the ruling Congress party and the administration of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he said he would tour five states holding elections next year to educate voters about corruption.

“We will tour all the five states and ask people not to vote for the traitors of this country,” he said.

He will also hold another protest in New Delhi on December 30 and the first two days of January, he said.

Anna Hazare. - File Photo.

NEW DELHI: The Indian government faced off against angry opposition parties and a popular hunger-striking activist Tuesday as it sought to push a divisive anti-corruption bill through parliament.

Parliament met for a special three-day session devoted to the new legislation which would create an independent “Lokpal” or ombudsman to probe corruption among senior politicians and civil servants.

“If you don’t pass this bill, the people of this country will never forgive you,” Telecoms Minister Kapil Sibal warned MPs as the debate got off to a heated start with the opposition insisting on a raft of amendments.

The bill has been condemned as weak and ineffectual by critics, including veteran activist Anna Hazare, 74, who was cheered on by several thousand flag-waving supporters as he began a three-day public fast in Mumbai to press for the law to be redrafted.

A similar protest by Hazare in August had galvanised millions of people who took to the streets of cities across India in a spontaneous outpouring of anger and frustration with the endemic graft that blights their daily lives.

The main points of contention focus on the ambit of the ombudsman’s office and its powers of investigation.

The government bill offers only limited jurisdiction over the prime minister and requires the ombudsman to put any criminal probes in the hands of the government-controlled Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Hazare and a number of opposition parties want the ombudsman’s office to have its own, independent investigative team.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s administration, which has been tainted by a series of high-profile corruption scandals, has a lot riding on the new legislation as it battles against accusations of policy drift.

The mass demonstrations triggered by Hazare’s campaign earlier in the year had forced a review of the bill’s initial draft and observers say any further climbdown on the government’s part would be very damaging politically.

“The government is acting as if this bill is a nuisance and they just want to get it over with,” opposition leader Sushma Swaraj told parliament.

Calling the draft legislation “weak and bureaucratic” and “fraught with deficiencies,” Swaraj said the government should either accept the opposition amendments or withdraw the bill entirely.

With key state elections looming, Hazare has threatened to take his protest to those regions going to the polls, and tens of thousands of his supporters have vowed a campaign of civil disobedience if the bill is passed in its present form.

Many see a new national hero in Hazare, who models himself on India’s independence icon Mahatma Gandhi.

But critics see an autocrat who uses undemocratic methods to force his views on parliament and offers false hopes that a single law can end corruption in Asia’s third-largest economy.

Writing in the Times of India on Tuesday, Law Minister Salman Khurshid said the government had “no hesitation in acknowledging” Hazare’s role in pushing the anti-corruption issue up the national agenda.

“But it is an infant idea that can be killed by pessimism or obduracy,” he warned.

The government will be keeping a wary eye on the turnout for Hazare’s Mumbai fast. His August hunger strike in New Delhi had attracted daily crowds numbering in the tens of thousands.

“What is going to be passed in parliament today is a farce. This is not the bill that we want,” said Vijaykumar Pulstya, 39, who came from far-away Haryana state in northern India to support Hazare.

Phoolsingh Maurya, a 70-year-old former head teacher, said public frustration with the government and official graft had reached breaking point.

“We have come to the stage where this government has to go. We cannot tolerate corruption for decades,” he said.

India's popular anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare. - AP Photo.

NEW DELHI: India’s federal Cabinet has approved legislation to create an anti-corruption watchdog, but a prominent activist who has campaigned against graft said Wednesday that he is not satisfied with the bill.

Activist Anna Hazare said the proposed bill was only an attempt to ”fool” the people. He said he would start a three-day fast from December 27 to protest the fact that government hadn’t accepted his version of the legislation. He also urged his supporters to court arrest after his fast.

Hazare, who claims inspiration from Mohandas K. Gandhi, has called his protest against corruption the second freedom struggle and has fasted three times already to garner support for his demands.

He started with a five-day fast in April after which the government invited members of his team to help draft the legislation. In August, he fasted for 12 days to force Parliament to pass his sweeping proposal to create a powerful watchdog to police everyone from the prime minister to the lowest village bureaucrat. He also held a daylong fast earlier in December.

The government’s version of the law was approved late Tuesday night and the bill is expected to be presented in Parliament on Thursday. Few details of the proposed legislation were immediately available.

Hazare said the exclusion of the country’s top investigative agency from the purview of the proposed corruption watchdog weakened the legislation. Keeping the Central Bureau of Investigation under the supervision of the ombudsman had been one of Hazare’s key demands.

Hazare’s campaign has drawn tens of thousands of people in a country where corruption is rampant and top officials are regularly embroiled in scandals even as hundreds of millions of people are trapped in poverty.

But critics say his populist campaign attempts to vilify all politicians and hold elected officials hostage.

The proposed law would create a powerful new ombudsman tasked with probing and prosecuting senior politicians and civil servants suspected of graft.. — Photo by AP

NEW DELHI: India’s cabinet on Tuesday approved a landmark anti-corruption bill which was the focus of nationwide demonstrations in August that rocked the government, state television said.

The cabinet meeting headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved the “Lokpal” or ombudsman bill, Doordarshan television said.

“Changes to some of the bill’s provisions have been made,” it said, adding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh headed the cabinet meeting.

The draft law would be introduced in parliament on Thursday, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said.

The proposed law would create a powerful new ombudsman tasked with probing and prosecuting senior politicians and civil servants suspected of graft.

In August, veteran Indian activist Anna Hazare held a 12-day hunger strike to protest against an initial draft of the bill, saying it was a toothless measure incapable of curbing the rampant corruption it was meant to target.

His campaign brought millions of ordinary Indians onto the streets in cities across the country, in a national outpouring of anger and frustration at the culture of bribery and kick-backs that permeates every level of Indian society.

The public response was a shock for premier Singh’s coalition government, which has been tainted by a series of high-profile corruption scandals.

Exact details of the approved version of the bill were not immediately known, but PTI and Doordarshan both reported the ombudsman will have limited jurisdiction over the prime minister.

The main dispute has been over who would fall under the new official’s ambit, with the Hazare campaign insisting that it should include the prime minister, the judiciary and lower-level civil servants.

Earlier Tuesday, Hazare renewed his threat to launch a second hunger strike for three days from December 27 to protest what he asserted was government attempts to dilute the bill’s provisions.

The current parliamentary session was scheduled to end on Wednesday, but the parliamentary affairs minister’s office said the house would reconvene for three days from December 27 to consider a number of outstanding bills.