Sonia slams BJP for parliament logjam, corruption

NEW DELHI - Congress president Sonia Gandhi Monday slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the deadlock in parliament over the demand for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe into the 2G spectrum scam and criticised the “corruption in BJP-ruled states”.

Addressing a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party on the last day of the winter session of parliament, Gandhi asked: “Who are they to lecture us on corruption?”

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi, while briefing the media on the meeting, quoted Gandhi as saying that BJP governments in Karnataka and several other states were corrupt.

Gandhi said several Congress leaders had resigned when allegations were raised against them, while BJP leaders facing corruption charges were clinging to their chairs.

Referring to the opposition protests that practically paralysed the winter session, Gandhi said that the “BJP should not denigrate the parliament”, Singhvi said.

Gandhi said the country would not tolerate the wastage of parliament time and loss to the public exchequer caused by the opposition protests, Singhvi added.

The entire opposition, including the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Left parties and others has been noisily demanding a JPC probe into the 2G spectrum allocation in 2008, which according to the CAG report, caused huge notional losses to the public exchequer.

This led to the adjournment of parliament on all days of the winter session except the inaugural day Nov 9.

A. Raja resigned Nov 7 as communications minister ahead of the parliament session over the scam.