New Delhi: Firing yet another salvo at the
UPA government on CVC appointment controversy and 2-G scam,
senior BJP leader L K Advani on Saturday said that it is not
Manmohan Singh but the office of Prime Minister that is
lacking integrity and suffers from a "governance deficit".
"In our parliamentary system of governance, the highest
office that can, and that must, set the right standards is
that of Prime Minister. Unfortunately, this is where India has
seen the most disturbing sight of governance deficit," Advani
said at a programme at IIT, Delhi.
"It is not that Manmohan Singh himself lacks integrity.
But today nobody can deny that the office he occupies lacks
integrity," he added.
Advani, however, hit out at the Prime Minister for
blaming "compulsions of coalition politics" for anomalies in
2-G spectrum allocation.
"He thereby absolved his own office of the blame in
keeping its `Eyes Wide Shut` while the loot was going on.
The Prime Minister`s answer was disingenuous also because it
seemed to suggest that corrupt practices were limited only to
ministers belonging to coalition partners of the Congress
party," Advani said.
The senior leader alleged that not just its allies
but even Congress had condoned corruption in the past.
"Indeed, nowhere was the culpability of the Congress
party more evident than in the brazen manner in which the
investigation into the Bofors scandal has been closed down.
The cover-up of this scandal is more scandalous than the
original scandal itself," Advani said.
The BJP leader did not spare Singh on the appointment
of P J Thomas as CVC either, saying he was culpable as he had
been warned by Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma
Swaraj about a corruption case pending against Thomas.
"After the Supreme Court quashed the appointment of CVC,
the Prime Minister said it was an error or judgement. But
couldn`t the error have been quickly and easily corrected as
soon as Swaraj pointed out that the person being appointed was
chargesheeted in a corruption scandal?" he asked.
Incidentally, the issue rocked the BJP last week when
differences between Swaraj and others like her Rajya Sabha
counterpart Arun Jaitley and party president Nitin Gadkari, on
the other, surfaced.
While Swaraj had suggested in a tweet that the matter
should rest now after Singh`s statement, Advani has attacked
the Prime Minister again today.
Advani, who has often targeted Manmohan Singh as a "weak
Prime Minister", said the Congress-led government was showing
interest in bringing Indian black money stashed abroad only
after the Supreme Court had stepped in. BJP has been raising
the issue since the 2009 general elections.
He maintained that the main opposition will ensure that
2011 becomes the "Year of Accountability" and will "keep the
government on its toes".
PTI
