Nearly 15,000 people across India took part in the voting in which Varun Gandhi topped in the list of Lokpal heroes with 34 percent votes, TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu came second with 21 percent votes and independent MP from Karnataka Rajeev Chandrasekhar was ranked third with 20.4 percent votes.
In what could be seen as a paradoxical bonding between the two Gandhi families who are close in blood relations but vertically opposite in ideology, Sonia Gandhi has been voted the top Lokpal loser and her nephew and political rival Varun Gandhi termed the Lokpal Hero in an online contest by an NGO. In an attempt to help Team Anna keep the public focus on Lokpal, Avaaz, an NGO that calls itself to be a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere, came up with this idea of Lokpal Awards. The awards are aimed to shame the politicians who "betrayed people of India by supporting a watered-down bill in Lok Sabha and obstructing efforts to pass a better bill in Rajya Sabha."
Avaaz announced the result of this online survey in a light-hearted ceremony held in New Delhi at the India International Centre. Nearly 15,000 people across India took part in the voting in which Varun Gandhi topped in the list of Lokpal heroes with 34 percent votes, TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu came second with 21 percent votes and independent MP from Karnataka Rajeev Chandrasekhar was ranked third with 20.4 percent votes. All the top ones in the list of Lokpal losers belong to the ruling congress party as Sonia Gandhi was ranked the topper with 39 percent votes followed by HRD and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal with 21 per cent votes and Rahul Gandhi came third with 14 percent votes.
The website had 10 names under the category “Vote for your top Lokpal villain” that included Rajya Sabha Chair, Hamid Ansari; Congress General Secretary, Rahul Gandhi; HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal; Samjwadi Party Chief, Mulayam Singh Yadav; Lok Janashakti Party Chief, Ram Vilas Paswan; Congress leader and Lokpal Standing Committee Chairman, Abhishek Manu Singhvi; Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherji; UPA Chairperson and Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, RJD MP, Rajniti Prasad and RJD President Lalu Prasad Yadav. It asked the respondents to vote Rahul Gandhi as the Lokpal loser as he was “consistently downplaying the benefits of a strong Lokpal and he blamed opposition parties for refusing to get behind Lok Sabha’s weak version of the bill.” For Sonia, the website said, “conspicuously absent in the recent Lokpal debates, she has disappointed many by not proactively supporting the Lokpal bill and setting the wrong tone for her party.”
For the Lokpal heroes section, it said, “These Lokpal heroes went out of their way to support a strong Lokpal.” The five names given were independent MP, Rajeev Chandrasekhar; BJP MP, Varun Gandhi; Congress MP, Praveen Singh Aron; Congress MP, Sandeep Dikshit and Telegu Desam Party Leader, Chandrababu Naidu. “A staunch supporter of the Jan Lokpal bill, he offered to introduce Jan Lokpal as a private member’s bill in the Lok Sabha if the government would not do it,” said the website about Varun Gandhi who was voted the favorite in Lokpal issue. The function had many prominent social figures talking about the issue of corruption and about the need for a strong anti-corruption law. Jagdeep Chhokar, founder trustee, Association of Democratic Reforms ADR; Arvind Gaur, Core committee Member, India Against Corruption; Kamal Jaswal, Director, Common Cause and Anupama Jha, Executive Director, Transparency International, India Chapter spoke at the event.
