The Bharatiya Janata Party was more than happy to see one more Minister in the Union Cabinet — Dayanidhi Maran — put in his papers on Thursday after being implicated in a telecom scandal pertaining to the period when he was holding charge of Communications.
The BJP has been demanding Mr. Maran's resignation alleging that he deliberately held up licences to Aircel and then gave it 23 licences after forcing the owners to sell equity in the company to the Malaysian firm Maxis.
“Mr. Maran should have resigned long ago. Why could the Prime Minister not see what had become clear and evident to all,” BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar asked. His view was that the Manmohan Singh government was acting only under pressure from the Supreme Court which was monitoring the investigations.
“The resignation was necessary and it was long overdue” is what the party said.
The BJP also criticised Home Minister P. Chidambaram, alleging that in his former capacity as Finance Minister he had “changed his mind and his stance” by agreeing to the first-come-first-served policy within days after a decision to go with it was taken. He had earlier steadfastly opposed it and recommended the auction route for allotting telecom licences and spectrum.
PTI adds:
PM must explain: Brinda
CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat said Mr. Maran resigned because there was no alternative for him and sought an explanation from the Prime Minister on the issue.
