Against the backdrop of thousands of suggestions being made to the Justice Verma committee on crime against women, activist Aruna Roy on Monday pitched for the involvement of citizens in framing laws.
In a letter to National Advisory Council Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, she slammed the Department of Personnel & Training for playing spoilsport in establishing a mechanism of pre-legislative process.
Roy said such a system would not cost any money and help build citizens' involvement and strengthening the democratic system.
"In a participatory democracy, when citizens are demanding their voice be heard, to not create an institutionalised platform for pre-legislative consultation, is unwise and self defeating. If the NAC is not considered the right platform for such a discussion, it should be taken up by some other agency immediately," Roy, who is also a part of the council, said.
At the same time, she was critical of the approach of the DoPT in not allowing a pre-legislative mechanism to take shape.
"Unfortunately, even a set of preliminary recommendations on the pre-legislative process taken up by the NAC have reached a dead end because of the resolve of the DoPT that it will 'consult 85 Departments' to elicit their opinion.
"Section 4 of the RTI Act actually mandates some of these processes. Unfortunately, the DoPT has inordinately delayed notifying and adopting the report of a task force it set up on implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act," she said.
According to a source, if the Congress finds a election/political angle in these recommendations, then they may be taken up.
With inputs from sources
