(Image source from: Lokpal Bill to be tabled in the Upper House today})

The superlative performance of Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party at the recent Delhi Assembly polls and social activist Anna Hazare's indefinite hunger strike that enters it's fourth day now might clear the way for the passing of Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill that has been kept in abeyance for over a year now.

The UPA government is under tremendous pressure to table the Bill at the earliest after the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left parties have offered to pass the Bill sans any debate, only if the Centre integrates the suggestions offered by the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha.

The highly-debated Lokpal Bill, which suffered an disgraceful end in 2011 in the Rajya Sabha, is likely to be reintroduced in the Upper House today again.

The urgency to pass the bill in both the houses before the winter session of the Parliament concludes can be read as a retroaction to the stellar performance of the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi that has left both Congress and BJP rattled. And the last thing they would want to do is to be seen on the wrong side of the pro-Lokpal, anti-corruption wave, which has clearly become a poll decider in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Nonetheless, even if the Lokpal Bill is passed, it will barely placate Anna Hazare. That is because the Lokpal Bill that will be tabled in the Parliament is a watered down version of the stronger 'Jan Lokpal' that Anna Hazare has demanded. Although Hazare's aide-de-camp, former IPS officer Kiran Bedi had given a thumbs up to the draft bill, Kumar Vishwas of the Aam Aadmi Party had called it a 'Jokepal' - a term coined by Anna himself when the draft was first introduced in 2011.

AW: Suchorita Dutta Choudhury