New Delhi/Bengaluru: Anna Hazare will be in Parliament's visitors' gallery when the government tables the Lokpal bill, Hazare's close aide Suresh Pathare said.

The members of Team Anna's Core Committee will also accompany him to the Parliament House complex on the day the government plans to table the bill.

Earlier, the social activist wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and reiterated his threat to start an agitation from December 27. Accusing the government of betraying the people, Hazare said he will launch a ‘jail bharo' (courting arrest) agitation from December 30, ahead of the earlier announced date of January 1.

"If the CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] is not under the Lokpal, it will be a toothless body. It appears the government does not want to let go of the agency," Hazare wrote in his four-page letter to Manmohan Singh.

"Whether it's the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] or the Congress, everybody in power has misused the CBI. They have attacked their opponents and protected their own corrupt leaders," added Hazare. He said that the prime minister, in the last few months, had written to him on several occasions assuring that a strong Lokpal bill will be passed in the winter session.

"But will it happen? I have my doubts," said Hazare.

The winter session is scheduled to end on December 22, but the government has said it will extend the session, if needed, to pass the Lokpal bill.

Rally in Karnataka

Meanwhile, Karnataka, the first state to set up a Lokaytukta (ombudsman) in 1986, yesterday saw a large rally to save the institution that has been headless for nearly three months now.

Hundreds of people — students, IT professionals, housewives, senior citizens — gathered at Freedom Park in Bengaluru city centre to protest the delay in naming a new Lokayukta.

The appointment has become a raging controversy between the Bharatiya Janata Party government led by D.V. Sadananda Gowda and Governor H.R. Bhardwaj, a veteran Congressman and former union law minister.

Bhardwaj has refused to accept the Gowda cabinet's choice of former Kerala High Court chief justice S.R. Bannumath to be the new Lokayukta as he is caught in a row over building a house in Bengaluru on a site meant for civic amenities.

All efforts being made

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday said the government is working "day and night" to give shape to the Lokpal bill and will make all efforts to pass the bill in the winter session of Parliament currently under way.

On his way back from Moscow, Singh told reporters that he was hopeful that the anti-corruption legislation will be brought to the Indian Cabinet by today for its approval.

As social activist Anna Hazare upped the ante on the Lokpal issue, Singh said one cannot speculate what would happen to the Lokpal once it is in Parliament.

"We will make all the effort to pass the bill in this session. We are working day and night to give shape to the bill and it is my hope that by tomorrow we should be able to bring the bill to the Cabinet," he said.

Singh said this when he was asked on board the PM's special aircraft whether the government will be able to pass the Lokpal bill in the winter session due to end on December 22.

Singh said after a Cabinet decision the government will be ready to take the Lokpal bill to Parliament.