CBI chargesheets Guj minister, BJP skips lunch with PM

The CBI today filed a chargesheet against Gujarat Minister of State for Home Amit Shah and 14 others in connection with the 2005 killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in an alleged staged shootout. Following this the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) refused to attend the lunch hosted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today.

“Four BJP leaders were invited for the PM’s luncheon meeting, but we decided not to attend it because we thought it would be very strange, if we were having lunch with the Prime Minister even as one of our colleagues was being arrested by the CBI. We think the move is misuse of CBI,” Sushma Swaraj, leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, told reporters.

The Prime Minister had invited L K Advani, Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari and Sushma Swaraj for a luncheon meeting to discuss the goods and services tax and other issues ahead of the Parliament’s monsoon session starting Monday. Jaitley and Swaraj are the leaders of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, respectively.

Swaraj said they had accepted the invitation, but after meeting at Advani’s house to discuss how CBI was being misused in Gujarat to harass Shah, close aide of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, they decided to turn down the invitation.

“The government is misusing CBI to harass its opponents. The whole political environment is being polluted by it. So, it would have been very embarrassing if we went to the PM’s house for lunch,” she said.

“When it comes to their own people, the government is working overtime to save them, be it Ottavio Quattrocchi, Jagdish Tytler or Satish Sharma. They are using CBI just to harass their political opponents... this is a show of sheer dominance by Congress to save its government.”

Jaitley said the premier investigating agency was behaving like an extended arm of the ruling party, and the timing had been chosen for Congress’ political convenience.

“When the Gujarat Police investigated the matter, nothing was found against Amit Shah. The investigations carried out by independent investigators, appointed by the Supreme Court, couldn’t find anything even in the second phase. Today, on the basis of baseless facts, a political agenda is being fulfilled by the CBI and the government is involved in a clear conspiracy in this,” he said.

“This is the policy of the Congress to create such an environment so that limelight shifts away from issues like rising prices of fuel, misadventure of the Indo-Pakistan dialogue and the Warren Anderson case,” he added.