The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) here on Tuesday criticised the government for aggressively campaigning against the Comptroller and Auditor-General's report on 2G spectrum allocation while going out of its way to defend the appointment of the “tainted” Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) P.J. Thomas.
Party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad was referring to the affidavit filed by the government in the Supreme Court defending its appointment of Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Prasad's charge was “the Centre does not know how to handle constitutional offices like the CAG and the CVC. In the process, it has weakened the credibility of both the institutions.”
‘No due diligence'
“It is obvious there was no due diligence in the CVC's appointment,” he said, recalling the dissent note recorded by Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, against the appointment that was favoured by the other two members of the selection committee — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
He did not agree with the government's view that the CVC could be appointed by “majority opinion” although he did not contest the government claim in the affidavit that the CVC Act nowhere stated that the appointment must be through a unanimous decision of the committee.
The country, he said, was entitled to know “if there were any compulsions that forced the Prime Minister to defend the indefensible.”
Taking a dig at Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Mr. Prasad said that while she had been presenting “bullet points” on how to deal with corruption, “people wanted to know how the government's aggressive defence of the CVC appointment will affect its declared commitment to fight corruption.”
Yeddyurappa scam
However, the BJP itself appeared defensive when asked what it was doing over the latest revelations of new land scams allegedly involving Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa's relatives. “The party is seized of the matter,” is all that reporters could extract from its spokespersons.
In the Karnataka case, the BJP's view is that the party was competent to conduct a party inquiry and then make up its mind whether the Chief Minister was involved in any wrong-doing. In fact, the BJP had been blaming Governor H.R. Bharadwaj for being over-enthusiastic about complaints made to him and over-reaching his gubernatorial position.
