By IANS,
New Delhi: Accusing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of protecting “tainted ministers”, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Wednesday asked him to take action against Home Minister P. Chidambaram over his apparent links with the spectrum pricing controversy.
“Let heads roll if need be,” Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj told a news conference here, a day after the prime minister, on his return from the UN, defended Chidambaram.
At a joint press conference along with her Rajya Sabha counterpart Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj also defended the BJP against charges of trying to force early elections.
In a direct and hard attack on Manmohan Singh, the party accused him of closing his eyes to reality and failing to lead the nation.
Pointing out that both Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi had May 22 vowed to fight corruption, Sushma Swaraj asked: “How did the policy of fighting corruption become a policy of saving corrupt ministers?”
Jaitley said the prime minister was expected to protect the truth, not “a tainted minister”.
Chidambaram has been embroiled in a row since a note from the finance ministry hinted that he too was to blame for the spectrum pricing decision that has landed former communication ministers A. Raja in jail.
Sushma Swaraj insisted that “para after para” of the note sent to the Prime Minister’s Office proved that Chidambaram, as then finance minister, was aware of pricing and policies of 2G spectrum allocation.
She also berated the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which she derisively dubbed as the “Congress Bachao Institution”, for declaring that there was no need to probe Chidambaram in the spectrum issue.
Both Sushma Swaraj and Jaitley also denied the prime minister’s charge that the opposition was trying to force early elections.
She insisted that the country was moving towards an early election, but held the government alone responsible for it.
“If there will be an early election, it will be because of their doing, not because of our asking,” she said.
The BJP’s response came after the prime minister Tuesday said attempts were being made to “destabilise polity” and accused the opposition of getting “prematurely restless” to “force” early elections. He had also said that his ministers enjoyed his “full confidence” and that he will “protect his ministers”.
Accusing the prime minister of “living in denial”, Jaitley said the cracks in the government were visible.
He said the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was facing a “crisis of leadership, crisis of credibility”.
“We don’t have the numbers to destabilize the government,” he said. “The government is collapsing under its own contradictions and the liability of its own image.”