Magsaysay awardee Rajendra Singh, along with another social activist P.V. Rajagopal, recently quit the core group of Anna Hazare's movement protesting against its taking sides in the just concluded Hisar Lok Sabha by-election. “There is no place for decent people in Team Anna. There is no inner democracy there. When we demand that the governments function more democratically, how could we ignore this aspect within our movement,” Mr. Singh, who was here, asked, talking to The Hindu on Thursday. “I quit the group because I could not have been a party to the kind of power brokering they did in the Hisar by-election,” he said. “At the outset, it was decided that the movement would not have anything to do with party politics. Even when the central theme is fighting corruption, Team Anna supported corrupt persons.” Mr. Singh said the decision to take sides in the by-election was made without consulting all members of the core group.
He said he and P G Rajgopal dissociated themselves from Hazare's movement as it had "deviated from its objective". "We thought the campaign will also raise public issues related to water and land but it did not do it," Singh said. The popular and media support to Hazare's anti-corruption campaign in Delhi had gone to the head of his aides and made them arrogant, he claimed. Describing Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal as the most arrogant members of Team Anna, he said being former bureaucrats they are in the habit of throwing their weight about and imposing themselves on others. Singh also said it was wrong to think that he had opted out of Team Anna out of fear of the Government.
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