Arun Shourie, disinvestment minister in the NDA government, today dared the government to hold an open enquiry into the sale of Centaur Hotel in Mumbai, and alleged that finance minister P Chidambaram was making it an issue based on a report prepared by a "handpicked" former government official."I am prepared to answer any question and face any enquiry. My appeal to the Prime Minister and the finance minister is that the enquiry should be open," he said at a press conference a day after Chidambaram said in the Lok Sabha that Shourie had taken "active interest" in the disinvestment of the hotel property for Rs 153 crore."There is an effort to dig dirt. They appointed a retired bureaucrat S Lakshminarayanan, picked by Chidambaram, to look into the disinvestment deals," Shourie said at the daily media briefing of the BJP.Demanding that the report of the official be released immediately to find out if anything "improper" had been done, he said the finance ministry itself had sent the details of this transaction cleared by the competent authority.
