Justice Verma recommendations revolutionary: Bedi

Welcoming the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee on reforms in anti-rape laws, activist Kiran Bedi on Thursday said these suggestions were revolutionary and can trigger an uprising if implemented.

Speaking at the launch of her book Uprising- 2011 at the Jaipur Literature Festival, she said that the Anna Hazare movement against corruption was the "first uprising" which was followed by the "second uprising" which saw protests of young people following the Delhi gang rape incident.

Now the "third uprising" would be the implementation of the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee.

"I do believe that it is going to be third uprising with the recommendations of Justice Verma Committee on the table. They (recommendations) are amazing as they cleaned up elections, policing, and politician-criminal backyard."

The three-member committee, which was set up to recommend measures to improve laws dealing with sexual offences, submitted its report to the government on Wednesday.

"With Justice Verma coming in, I believe that community will have to play interesting role," she said.

Bedi described Uprising-2011 as "amazing and quick compilation" of sequence of events related to Anna movement against corruption.

"It was the first time coming together non-politically, patriotically and selflessly for a cause which was hurting, bugging and concerning all and this is what this book is all about," she said.

According to her, the book was about "seeing history" and not reading history.

"I started preserving which was happening in Annaji's movement and it was complied for this book. This book is about seeing history, not reading history. It has clipping of that period which we picked most objectively.

"All cartoons, articles we selected them at that time are there in the book. This is an amazing quick compilation giving long life to reporting of the movement."

In response to a question whether the agitation related to crime against women lacked leadership or known faces like her, she said it succeeded because of all new and unknown youths were the face of the agitation, not "overused faces".