Bofors papers will not be made public: Gujral
Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral on Monday asserted that his government would not fall prey to the Congress's ploy or the Bharatiya Janata Party's pressures to make the Bofors papers public. For, this would jeopardise the efforts to track down the secret accounts in the gun deal.
Obviously responding to the demands by both Sonia Gandhi and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the prime minister expressed confidence that the government would shortly get at the accounts
where the pay-offs were stashed.
Gujral was addressing a mammoth public meeting in Hyderabad,
to kickstart the United Front's election campaign. The
three-hour long meeting was addressed by the top UF brass and several chief ministers.
The cases, Gujral continued, have reached a crucial stage
in the Swiss courts and any premature disclosure would only help shield the culprits. Moreover, this would annoy the Swiss
authorities who had handed over the papers 'purely for legal
purposes'.
Gujral said the papers were with the government even
during P V Narasimha Rao's regime, indicating the Congress
was already in possession of facts. The Swiss authorities have also
disclosed the names of the recipients. Now both the Congress and
the BJP are raising the bogey of 'Bofors papers' for political ends,
the prime minister said.
Slogan-shouting marred the proceedings when the prime minister
addressed the meeting. Initially the employees of the state-owned
Indian Drugs and Pharmaceutical Limited waved placards to draw his attention to the plight of their sick unit. At the closing stage, the crowd demanded that Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu address them.
Making a scathing attack on the Congress, the prime minister said his government did not fall because of corruption charges.
"Gone are the days when scams and scandals
thrived in the Central government," he said, "The UF government has
come out unscathed during its 18-month tenure."
Scandals, be it Bofors or urea, the PM went on, flourished during the Congress
regime. The party even took a public stand denying tickets to
its leaders involved in corruption charges.
Most leaders, who addressed the gathering, targeted the
Congress for bringing about political instability. The all-out criticism of the party was apparently in the context of the UF partner, the Telugu
Desam taking on the Congress in Andhra Pradesh.
In a frontal attack on the BJP, the prime minister described the
party as only a mask of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh. While
the BJP is talking in terms of reconciliation with the minorities,
its controlling body (the RSS) was asserting
that the liberation of Kashi and Mathura temples was their main agenda. Such double standards would only pose a threat to the unity and the integrity of the country.
Former prime minister H D Deve Gowda said the days of the single-party rule were over. The coalition era ushered in by
the UF is here to stay, he said.
West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu emphasised the need to keep
at bay both the Congress and the BJP.
"The CPI-M has already decided to
participate in a UF government if it is voted to power," he said.
CPI-M general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet said the Congress
was disintegrating and that Sonia Gandhi would not be able to
revive it.
UNI
RELATED REPORT:
BJP takes stock of Sonia effect on campaign
Tell us what you think of this report
|