After evicting Baba Ramdev from Delhi, the government today asserted itself against Anna Hazare and his colleagues, sternly telling them that it would go ahead with the drafting of the Lokpal Bill "even in their absence", if civil society representatives continued with their boycott of the joint committee meetings. It also underlined to the Hazare camp that its involvement in the drafting exercise was being seen as undermining of the "supremacy of the Constitution" by other political parties. The government, however, invited them for the next meeting of the joint committee on June 15.

The government's curt message was delivered shortly after the Congress bracketed both Anna Hazare and yoga guru Ramdev together calling them "mukhautas (masks)" of the BJP and asserting that there was "no bigger sanyasi" in contemporary politics than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The minister Kapil Sibal made it clear that the government would go ahead with the drafting of the Lokpal Bill even if the civil society representatives refused to participate in future meetings.

Mr. Sibal read out the responses sent by some of the political parties on the questionnaire circulated by the government inviting suggestions on the Lokpal Bill. He said the BJP's view was that law-making was the prerogative of the Parliament and cannot be done by a select group of civil society. Similarly, BSP had said that procedure adopted for drafting of Lokpal bill "was not consistent with Parliament processes". The CPM and the CPI have also echoed this.