Opposition parties on Tuesday asked finance minister Arun Jaitley to follow the example of BJP veteran L.K.
Opposition parties on Tuesday asked finance minister Arun Jaitley to follow the example of BJP veteran L.K. Advani and resign in the DDCA row shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Mr Jaitley will come through “with flying colours” against charges of corruption in the same way that Mr Advani did in the hawala case.
The main Opposition Congress asked the government to bring sports bodies under the purview of RTI while assuring that it will support the amendments in the RTI Act in Parliament.
“Today I heard Prime Minister saying that Jaitley will come out of this like L.K. Advani in the Jain hawala case. I will remind Jaitley that Advani had then resigned and had not come back till he got clean chit from the Supreme Court. He did not contest Lok Sabha elections held in 1998,” Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters. “So the Prime Minister seems to be telling Jaitley that he should not continue as finance minister till he gets cleared,” Mr Azad said addressing a joint press conference with party leaders Anand Sharma and Randeep Surjewala.
The AICC briefing saw Congress leaders utilising to the hilt BJP MP Kirti Azad’s assertions in the Lok Sabha on the issue, contending that none of the ministers of the party and BJP MPs present contested his charges. “It means all of them were agreeing to what Kirti Azad was saying,” Mr Azad said, adding that Kirti had also spoken of a CBI inquiry having been ordered into the DDCA.
He suggested that Mr Jaitley’s opposition to the earlier UPA government’s plans to bring sports bodies under the RTI appeared to be linked to the DDCA affairs.
Mr Surjewala said that the Congress was ready to provide full cooperation to the government in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha if the Prime Minister and the finance minister bring a bill to bring sports bodies under RTI to address the issue of transparency.
Mr Sharma said the BJP used to demand the resignation of ministers on flimsy reasons when it was in the Opposition. “Now the Prime Minister only talks about transparency, but does not practise it,” he added. He said the PM should tell the nation whether he has ordered a CBI inquiry into the DDCA row and if so, why has the nation been kept in the dark so far.
The ruling BJP was quick to dismiss such claims. “There is no parallel between charges against Advani and Jaitley. The CBI had registered a case, launched a criminal investigation and Advani quit as an MP on moral grounds. There is no criminal probe against Jaitley. These are allegations levelled by Opposition which are unsupported by evidence,” BJP secretary Shrikant Sharma said.
