New Delhi, July 2(ANI): The Congress party on Saturday said that the meeting between Congress President Sonia Gandhi and social activist Anna Hazare to discuss the draft of anti-graft Lokpal Bill was positive.
Addressing a news conference in New Delhi, Congress General Secretary Janardhan Dwivedi said: "Talks were held in a cordial atmosphere. Anna Hazare kept his final points in front of Sonia Gandhi with full respect and the talks with Anna's team were good, however he did not say anything about the fast."
"This is a coalition government which is running under the leadership of Congress, so whatever points have been kept would be thoroughly discussed within the leaders of the government and the final decision would be taken on a mutual agreement," he added.
The civil society activists met Sonia Gandhi at her 10 Janpath residence this evening. The meeting was earlier scheduled for June 30, but was cancelled.
The meeting comes a day after Hazare and his civil society activists' team met senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders ahead of the all-party meeting scheduled on July 3 to discuss the draft of the Lokpal Bill.
The civil society members had met BJP veteran L.K. Advani, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley to garner support for their version of the Lokpal Bill.
In an endeavor to build a consensus on the Lokpal Bill drafted by the civil society activists, Hazare had met Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar earlier on Thursday.
He also met Communist Party of India (CPI) General Secretary A.B. Bardhan in this regard.
Hazare is meeting political leaders across the board to build a consensus on the Bill that members of the civil society have drafted - a key element of which is to include the Prime Minister under the purview of the Lokpal.
Civil society representatives and social activists Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi earlier met Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Prakash Karat in this regard.
They termed the meeting as positive and said that Karat agreed on several points with civil society members over the Lokpal Bill.
The final meeting between the government and civil society representatives on the Lokpal Bill ended here on June 21 with differences continuing to persist on six issues including bringing the post of the Prime Minister under the purview of Lokpal.
Two sets of drafts- one by the government and the other by the civil society representatives would now be circulated amongst political parties and then would be forwarded to the cabinet for the final drafting of the bill. (ANI)
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