Within hours of the tabling of the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) report on the Commonwealth Games in Parliament on Friday, the Bharatiya Janata Party demanded resignation of the Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and maintained that the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should clarify on the purported involvement of his office in the conduct of the games.
Senior leaders of the party are expected to meet before Parliament resumes on Monday and work out a strategy to turn the heat on the government. At the moment there are two views in the party.
The leaders concede that the accepted practice is to allow the Public Accounts Committee to scrutinise the CAG report and submit its own report to Parliament.
“But if the nature of irregularities unearthed by the CAG is serious as the principal Opposition group we have a responsibility to pin down the government and seek immediate answers. At the moment we are in the process of studying the voluminous report and would be in a position to take a call on our strategy before Monday,” a leader said.
When pointed out that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had pledged to cooperate with the government to ensure a smooth monsoon session of Parliament, the leader said there was no ‘Memorandum of Understanding' and it was only logical for any party to raise issues as they arose.
BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told journalists that the report confirmed that massive irregularities had taken place in organising the Commonwealth Games and there was patent abuse of the system. “The CAG report and the report of V.K. Shunglu Committee appointed by the Prime Minister himself concur. The Shunglu report said there is a method in the madness. This scam is not possible without the consent of the higher-ups,” he said.
He argued that such huge allocations would not have been possible without the consent of the Cabinet Committee, the Cabinet Sub-Committee, the GoMs, the Expenditure Committee, the Finance Committee and the PMO, and said that their role should be probed.
