Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held out an olive branch to a fractious Opposition on the opening day of the monsoon session of Parliament, saying his government was ready “for every piece of discussion” that it “may want,” even as he dismissed the BJP's charge that the government was using the Central Bureau of Investigation to influence the investigation in the Sohrabuddin case. Expressing the hope that Parliament would “be peaceful and productive,” he stressed that there would be “opportunity to debate many important issues of national importance.”
Speaking to journalists, the Prime Minister said there was “no truth in that [BJP charge].” He said: “The Opposition knows it jolly well. This Sohrabuddin case is a Supreme Court-directed investigation. The Central government has no hand in it. It has not tried to influence the investigation process in any way, I repeat categorically, in any way.”
Dr. Singh's response comes in the wake of the arrest of the former Gujarat Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah, on Sunday in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh “encounter” case, and repeated accusations by the BJP over the last few days about the “partisan” manner in which the CBI was functioning, that while it was targeting the BJP-ruled States of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, it had ignored the Andhra Pradesh angle.
Pointing out that Parliament was due to debate “important pieces of legislation,” the Prime Minister said the views of the Opposition members “will be very welcome,” and stressed that he wanted Parliament to function smoothly as “That is what the people of India expect.”
Later, party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi also made a similar appeal to the BJP: “We hope and trust that the BJP will allow Parliament to function in a constructive and harmonious spirit,” he stressed, while expressing the hope that the “advance intimation of obstruction” by the Opposition that he had heard of, would not be carried out.
“I can assure the Opposition and the country at large that nothing will be excluded from discussion,” he said, while adding that the form in which price rise would be discussed would be decided by the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) in consultation with the chairs of the two Houses.
The Opposition, Mr. Singhvi alleged, wanted “a discussion about a discussion,” not a “discussion about price rise.”
On the BJP's accusation that the CBI had deliberately left out the Andhra Pradesh angle in the Sohrabuddin case, the Congress spokesperson said BJP president Nitin Gadkari, instead of holding press conferences on the subject, should submit all evidence he had to the Supreme Court, the CBI and the CBI-designated court.
