Sonia upset with Pranab on Fernandes issue

Clean chit to Fernandes unjustified and unwarranted: Left

Congress President Sonia Gandhi is said to be angry, according to a senior Left leader ,over the clearing of charges against former Defence Minister George Fernandes in the coffingate scam. The blame is being laid at the doorstep of the current Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Gandhi was foremost among the currently in power to have attacked Fernandes over the alleged irregularities in war procurements, mainly coffins, during the Kargil war. A war of words has since ensued between Gandhi and Fernandes, with neither missing an opportunity to point fingers at each other.

However, it is not only Gandhi who is upset with Mukherjee. The leaders of the four Left parties who met the Government over breakfast in the morning today 'sharply attacked' the Defence Minster for the 'misleading affidavit' which appears to have given Fernandes a clean chit in the matter of Kargil war purchases, which included coffins, a Left source said.

"Is this how you use the affidavit?' the Left is supposed to have asked of the Defence Minister. In reply, Mukherjee is reported to have explained to the Left that it was not as though Fernandes's name had been cleared.

There were still five cases against him that had been referred to the Central Investigation Bureau (CBI) and that a supplementary affidavit would soon be filed in the Supreme Court, to bring out the entire facts of the matter, the Left was told.

The Government's affidavit was filed in response to a notice by the Supreme Court on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) which asked the Centre to explain the action taken on a CAG report which probed the irregularities in the Kargil war purchases.

The affidavit which was filed by MM Singh, the Under Secretary in the Ministry of Defence said that the decisions taken during Operation Vijay during the Kargil war, including the relaxation in the procedure for the procurement of weapons and other materials were in keeping with the needs of the war.

They 'in no way violated any of the financial rules of the Government or the Defence Procurement Procedure, 1992,' the affidavit says.

The Ministry of Defence had then issued a clarification that Fernandes had not been given a clean chit. It had said that the affidavit did not refer to or mention any person, 'much less George Fernandes'. It had said that inference drawn that Fernandes had been given a clean chit hence 'unjustified and totally unwarranted.'