PM declines comment on Ashok Chavan

ON BOARD AIR INDIA ONE - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday declined comment on a housing scam involving Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan.

“I am not familiar with the facts of the case,” the prime minister told journalists on his way home from Vietnam, at the end of a three-nation Asian tour.

He said he had seen newspaper reports about politicians, senior military officers and bureaucrats who had taken over flats in a housing society in Mumbai meant for war heroes.

“When I go back, I will look into the facts and make a meaningful comment,” he said.

He added later that the issue was in the court and so sub-judice.

Chavan, whose mother-in-law is said one of those who got a flat in the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society, Saturday met Congress president Sonia Gandhi here and offered to resign.

The flats were originally meant for families of soldiers killed in the 1999 Kargil conflict with Pakistan. Some of the military officers who got the houses have offered to surrender them.