NEW DELHI: Wary of disclosing audio recordings of the joint Lokpal drafting committee, the government has sought the advice of the law ministry on making the proceedings public. The joint drafting committee was set up after activist Anna Hazare launched a fast in April demanding enactment of a strong anti-corruption law.

The committee comprising five members of Team Anna and five cabinet ministers was formed to finalize the draft of the Lokpal Bill and audio recordings of the proceedings were made.

"Joint drafting committee was constituted by notification of the ministry of law and justice wherein JDC was supposed to evolve its own procedure...It may be further noted that the matter relating to RTI queries on audio-recordings of JDC has been referred to department of legal affairs in ministry of law and justice for clarification," a department of personnel and training (DoPT) official said.

Activist S C Agrawal had sought audio recordings of the proceedings of the committee from DoPT. The department said it has posted the details of the proceedings in the form of minutes on its website but the audio recordings were not available with it.

The committee was constituted on April 10. The five members from the government side were finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, home minister P Chidambaram, the then law minister Veerappa Moily, telecom and HRD minister Kapil Sibal and the then minority affairs minister Salman Khurshid.

The civil society members on the committee were: Anna Hazare, Justice N Santosh Hedge, Shanti Bhushan, Prashan Bhushan and Arvind Kejriwal.