By TCN News,
Bhopal: The Social Democratic Party of India, (SDPI), has hailed the stepping down, though belatedly, of Union Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and Union Law Minister Ashwani Kumar.
SDPI national president A. Sayeed in a statement said that the Congress apparently in a damage control exercise gave marching orders to Bansal whose kin was caught accepting a bribe from a senior railway board official. While Ashwani Kumar, who was facing heat for tampering with a CBI report in the coal scam probe was under fire after the Supreme Court came down heavily on the CBI for allowing the law ministry to vet the draft of CBI probe report on Coalgate, was also asked to go.
Sayeed said it seems that the Congress, which successfully snatched Karnataka from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the anti-corruption plank, did not want to send out a wrong signal by showing it was soft on corruption. The cases of corruption against Bansal and Kumar should not be taken in isolation but are part of a pattern as the scourge of corruption has engulfed the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre.
He said that it is good Congress has dispelled the charge of double standards which was being levelled at it by taking action against Bansal and Kumar. Prior to Friday action taken by the Congress it was being said that it saves its own ministers indulging in corruption while its allies’ ministers are not spared in the face of soft stand taken against the two ministers. Earlier, the ex-ministers A. Raja and Kalanidhi Maran of DMK were asked to go by Congress leadership following the breakout of 2G scam.
Sayeed lamented that precious time of Parliament’s budget session would not have gone down the drain had Bansal and Kumar resigned a few days back when the Opposition parties were stalling the working of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha demanding their ouster from the Union Cabinet following their names found in associated with corruption.