A day after the Cabinet expansion, Congress asked what had happened to Modi's pre-poll claim of cleansing politics of criminals. It singled out two ministers of state, TDP nominee Y S Chawdhary for being a top loan defaulter (Rs 317 crore) from Central Bank of India and Ram Shankar Katheria for having 23 criminal cases against him.
AICC general secretary Ajay Maken said, "The PM talks about clean India but not clean politics. We condemn it." He added, "Cleansing Parliament of criminals comes later. Selecting his ministry is his prerogative and he can at least keep the tainted out of his ministry." Maken also demanded an apology from the PM while seeking resignations of the tainted ministers.
Talking about another new MoS, Giriraj Singh, Maken reminded how he had strangely undervalued a theft at his house in Patna to Rs 50,000 though the police later recovered Rs 1.25 crore. "Who is tainted if not a person from whose residence such huge cash is recovered and the matter is being inquired by the income tax department," he said.
Reacting to the Congress offensive, information and broadcasting minister Arun Jaitley said, "The entire charge of Congress is baseless. It seems Congress is devoid of political issues... Congress should confine itself to the quality of poor governance that it gave and compare it with the quality of governance that NDA is giving, rather than resort to these baseless allegations."
Jaitley said cases against Katheria were politically motivated. "Every BJP worker in UP faces a criminal case lodged by the Akhilesh Yadav government," he said.
Jaitley rejected Congress's charge against Chaudhary as well, saying, "He is a well known industrialist and one of his companies was in losses. One account was in difficulty. The bank restructured it. He is paying back all his installments. He has a regular account today," Jailey said, adding, "Since when has it become an offence."
Replying to Congress's charge against Giriraj, Jaitley said there was no case pending against the MoS from Bihar. "Bihar government could have slapped a case against him if the charges were true," he said.
"The examples given by him are completely baseless," said Jaitely who also dismissed the allegation that health minister J P Nadda got the deputy director of AIIMS shed his additional charge as CVO of the institution allegedly to protect the corrupt.
Training its guns on the Modi ministry, Maken said the PM was expected to sack the 12 "tainted" ministers as the Supreme Court had suggested in its August order, but he had increased the number of "tainted" ministers to 16.
He said Modi's much-trumpeted claim of bringing synergy in ministries did not match with the clubbing of the I&B ministry with finance, or by giving tourism ministry to an MP from Noida after taking it away from a Goa MP, or by replacing Harsh Vardhan in health ministry with Nadda or by carving Ayush out of health ministry.
"What is the synergy between finance ministry and I&B except that some businessmen have purchased media houses. Is there any other synergy between the two?" Maken asked.
http://ift.tt/1nPaNvH Modi,J P Nadda,Congress,AIIMS
Stay updated on the go with The Times of India’s mobile apps. Click here to download it for your device.
No comments:
Post a Comment