Volkswagen rocks House

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) members today staged a walkout in the state legislative Assembly demanding dismissal of marketing minister B Satyanarayana for blotching up the Volkswagen deal by acting in haste in transferring Rs 11.67 crore to Vasishta Wahan while he was the major industries minister.

While the main Opposition continued its tirade against the minister and the state government in the Assembly alleging his involvement and also other officials in the subsequent diversion of the money that was meant for government's equity commitment in the proposed car manufacturing project, the government strongly denied the allegations.

"We only continued the process initiated by the previous government led by N Chandrababu Naidu to bring the Volkswagen project to Andhra Pradesh and dealt with the same people with whom Naidu had a special rapport," K Rosaiah, minister for finance and legislative affairs, told the house in response to a noisy discussion on the role of Helmuth Scushter, the then India project head of Volkswagen, and others like Ashok Jain and Jagadish Raja, promoters of Vasishta Wahan.

"We believed them as you (TD) believed them in the past. As soon as it came to light that the money was no more in the account and Volkswagen company itself held that Schuster committed irregularities, our government instituted a CBI inquiry into the whole episode," the minister replied.

Earlier defending the government, industry minister J Geeta Reddy pointed out that the government had transferred the money to the account of Vasishta Wahan only after receiving a letter from Schuster, who was the authorised representative of Volkswagen.

Hitting back at the Opposition, she said the previous government issued an order to purchase ambulances worth Rs 25 crore, each costing a whopping Rs 50 lakh from Volkswagen, even without receiving any such proposal from the company.

Rejecting the government's argument, senior TDP members T Devender Goud and Yanamala Ramakrishnudu strongly objected to the government's action in transferring the money and demanded the dismissal of Satyanarayana to enable a fair enquiry into the episode. Holding chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy responsible for messing up the Volkswagen deal, they said that it was done with his full knowledge.

With the government sticking to its guns that any irregularity on the part of any person in the government, if at all committed, will come out once the CBI enquiry was completed, the Telugu Desam members staged the walkout in protest.