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BJP, Left urge govt to call Sonia's bluff

The Bharatiya Janata Party today fired the first salvo against Sonia Gandhi, with party spokesperson Sushma Swaraj demanding that the United Front government accept the gauntlet thrown by the Congress's star campaigner to make the names of those involved in the Bofors scandal public without delay.

Swaraj told a news conference in Bombay that Sonia's statement in Bangalore on Thursday was a virtual ''warning'' to the government as she considered ''offence as the best defence''. Swaraj said since some names had already come out on the Bofors case, one of them being that of Ottavio Quattrochi, ''the public would want to know what Mrs Gandhi has to say about the relationship of this Italian national with 10, Janpath,'' whom she alleged had been declared as a proclaimed offender in the Bofors case and fled the country.

She alleged that Quattrochi, who was the representative of various multinational companies in India, was allowed to flee the country by the Congress when it was in power.

The BJP leader said the issue could not be kept in the dark any longer and the United Front government should make public the beneficiaries of kickbacks in the Bofors gun deal without delay, since it was now free from the constraints it faced earlier because of its dependence on Congress support. Since Sonia herself wanted to clinch the issue, the government should take the inquiry to its logical conclusion. ''It is the first arrow shot by Mrs Gandhi and it will boomerang on her'', she said.

Swaraj said Sonia's entry in the campaign had now become an issue of national pride ''as the direct question involved was whether the country's leadership should be imported'' from abroad.

When a newsperson drew her attention to BJP leader A B Vajpayee's statement that Sonia would not be a target of attack during his party's campaign and asked why they were targeting her now, Swaraj said when Vajpayee said this, Gandhi had not become the chief campaigner for the Congress. "But now it has become the issue of national pride."

In New Delhi, Vajpayee demanded that the government release all documents relating to the Bofors gun deal scandal immediately as Sonia has herself demanded it.

In an informal chat with newspersons at an iftar party hosted by him at the BJP headquarters, Vajpayee said in view of her demand, ''it was necessary that the government releases all of them without delay''

''Till now the government had not given permission to release those papers. Now that she wants them to be released, the government should do so immediately'', he added.

Vajpayee said the documents fall in three categories: one is the findings of the Central Bureau of Investigation and other Indian investigating agencies, the second related to information received from A B Bofors, and the last related to all cases pending before courts, specially Swiss courts.

He said the BJP wanted them to be released now and added, ''If the government makes any excuse, we will release them when we get a chance.''

Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet too said the Left parties have been demanding that the Bofors documents be made public.

UNI

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