The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today stepped up attacks on the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government over the Commonwealth Games (CWG) and multi-crore 2G spectrum allocation scandals, and posed 10 questions to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
BJP President Nitin Gadkari demanded setting up of a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to look into these scams, but refrained from demanding PM’s resignation. “He should accept the demand for a JPC and suggest measures to recover losses and fix responsibility,” he said.
“Congress has broken all records of corruption in the recent past which was painful for the country. People of this country have the right to demand answers from the Prime Minister’s Office.”
He said a CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) enquiry into the CWG scam was not enough. “CBI lacks the trust and authority to punish bigwigs like Suresh Kalmadi, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit and Union ministers Jaipal Reddy and M S Gill, who were the political leadership involved.”
Gadkari targeted the prime minister for the lengthy delay on his part in taking a decision on a plea for sanction of prosecution of former telecom minister A Raja on the spectrum controversy. He said Congress means corruption and the CBI is a trusted arm of the party.
He demanded to know why no action had been taken so far against Prasar Bharati CEO B S Lalli, who allegedly overruled the objections by finance department and gave Rs 246-crore telecast rights of the CWG to an entity, which produced a fake registration number and had no service tax number. He also wanted PM to clarify what were the connections of Kanishk Singh, a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, with the proprietors of the EMAAR MGF, the company which built filthy CWG flats.
Gadkari also drew the prime minister’s attention to the steep escalation in the budgetary provisions for the CWG overlays. He asked who was responsible for approving the advance of over Rs 1,669 crore for the CWG Organising Committee and another Rs 687 crore for overlay (temporary fittings and fixtures) of which Rs 557 crore was actually disbursed.
