New Delhi : The political has become the personal. The political clash between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Sonia Gandhi has turned personal. On a day when the AgustaWestland scam dominated Parliament and the streets of the national capital, Modi fired a salvo at the Gandhis from a public election rally in Tamil Nadu.
“Those responsible for the helicopter scam must be punished,” he said and though he did not name the Congress leaders, nothing was left to imagination as he added: “They were identified as culprits by the people of Italy, what can we do? I haven”t been to Italy, I don”t know anyone there.”
But his Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar was quite upfront about the political objective of the investigation. “What we could not do in Bofors, we may be able to do now,” he said as he summed up his response to a calling attention notice in the Lok Sabha. The reference to more than three decade old corruption scandal in a Swiss gun deal that tainted Mrs Gandhi”s husband and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, though he was not convicted of any charges was not lost on anyone.
Modi breaks silence, says guilty will not be spared
Parrikar”s ”Águsta won”t go the Bofors way” shot came at end of his rather long-winding narrative delivered in his admixture of ”Konkani-Marathi-Hindi” driving home the point that the government believes that the Congress designed a corrupt deal to buy Agusta Westland helicopters, and then ducked taking any real action when it was in power. The defence minister created a flutter when he said that he would monitor the investigation by the CBI and the ED from now onwards, as this opened him up to the charge of interference in their working. But he amended his statement to point out that his reference to monitoring was only to the extent of keeping a tab on the progress.
Throughout his response to the debate, Parrikar asserted that he would not be naming any names, while making allusions to the small fry who washed their hands in the flowing ganga of corruption, whereas the ”big fries” who knew the force and direction of the ganga have remained out of the ambit of action. He also quoted from the Italian judge”s order that that though there is evidence that Indian politicians and bureaucrats were bought, it is up to India to uncover the guilty and emphasised that this task would be done. “I will not disappoint you in this respect,” he stressed.
