The Hindu : National : Bofors row will not hit poll prospects, says Congress

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Bofors row will not hit poll prospects, says Congress

Special Correspondent

“In over 20 years, not a shred of evidence has been found”

“Another instance of the BJP’s doublespeak”
NDA government did not prefer appeal

NEW DELHI: The Congress is confident that the latest controversy in the Bofors gun deal will not affect its prospects in the elections as the issue has been raked up once too often over the past two decades.

Describing it as an overused bullet, Congress spokesman and Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said here on Tuesday: “The BJP has overused the Bofors bullet. Bofors has been a political agenda of the Opposition. But, in over 20 years, not a shred of evidence has been found.”

Referring to BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley’s offensive against the Congress after news broke of the Central Bureau of Investigation withdrawing the Red Corner Notice against Ottavio Quattrocchi — an Italian businessman accused in the Bofors gun deal — Mr. Sharma said it was the former Home Minister, L.K. Advani, who insisted that the CBI remain under the government.

“This is another instance of the BJP’s doublespeak. It accuses the Congress of misusing the CBI, but when it had the chance of freeing it from government control, Mr. Advani himself spoke against the move,” Mr. Sharma said.

On the Bofors case itself, Mr. Sharma wanted to know why the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government had not appealed against the Delhi High Court decision to drop cases against two public servants named in the payoffs case — the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and the former Defence Secretary, S.K. Bhatnagar. The court order came in February 2004 when the BJP was in office.

Mr. Sharma pointed out that Mr. Jaitley, as Additional Solicitor-General in the V.P. Singh government, had gone to Europe several times to gather evidence in the case but could not come up with anything. “Then again the BJP was in government for six years from 1999. Yet, they could not get evidence in the case and now they want to use it for political mileage in this election.”

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