Agriculture minister and NCP boss Sharad Pawar called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from London on Sunday morning to convey that the NCP did not support the frantic search for a judge less than a fortnight before the Lok Sabha election results are declared.
National Conference leader and J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah tweeted that setting up an inquiry in the "dying hours of UPA-2" was wrong. He said his father and Union minister Farooq Abdullah was in agreement with him.
Asked about the probe, UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav told TOI, "Inquiries are often used for political purposes but I don't want to comment specifically on Snoopgate."
Modi, meanwhile, heaped scorn on the Congress activism on appointing a judge. "It is an act of despair by a government which is becoming increasingly certain about its defeat. It is one of those last-ditch efforts made by a government which seems increasingly inept at handling its defeat gracefully," Modi told IANS in an interview.
The NCP-NC protests strengthened the scepticism within the Congress about the Centre's late bid to find a judge to probe the stalking of a woman architect allegedly on Modi's orders.
The political call that the Congress now has to take is whether it is willing to be seen as being single-handedly responsible for the move the BJP has slammed as a political witch hunt. The Congress's isolation will enhance the risk of BJP's charges looking credible.
Welcoming the stand taken by the two UPA allies, BJP said even coalition partners were refusing to be part of Congress's "politics of vendetta".
"I must say frankly what NCP and National Conference has said is right. Ten days from now, election results will be announced. People have given their verdict and it is massively against the Congress and still they want to use the power till the very end," BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said.
"It shows that UPA allies have found sense. They are seeing the truth. This is the politics of vendetta which is the specialty of Congress. Political parties do not want to get involved in it," another party spokesperson M J Akbar said. ?
Sources in the Congress acknowledged that the protests from Pawar and Abdullah have put a question mark on whether the government will go ahead with its plan to appoint a judge to head the inquiry commission.
The latest twist in the protracted battle of wits between the BJP and the Congress over Snoopgate comes in the last leg of the elections, with results slated for May 16.
The red-flag from UPA allies was unexpected given that the Union Cabinet had on December 26 decided to set up an inquiry commission on the allegations that Modi had ordered Gujarat police to follow the movements of a young architect and to illegally tap the phones of persons she interacted with.
The decision touched off a political war of words but the government could not find a judge to head the inquiry panel, even leading to taunts from the BJP.
However, five months later, Congress has resurrected the probe and rebuffed the objections by saying that UPA was not a caretaker government and was within its rights to follow up on a Cabinet decision taken earlier.
In his telephonic protest, Pawar pointed out to PM Singh that the matter was best left for the next government. He emphasized that the government had not been able to persuade an SC judge, indicating that it was now looking at a high court judge to do the job.
Pawar's confidant and Union heavy industries minister Praful Patel summed up the NCP stance thus, "We feel with just days remaining for the result of the LS polls, it will not be proper for the government to appoint a judge. It is too late in the day."
"Our plea is that in the last five months, we failed to set up the commission. Now when the new government is set to take over, let the new government take a decision. We have conveyed our displeasure to the prime minister,'' Patel said.
Abdullah said to appoint a judge five months after the cabinet decision was "wrong".
The Congress, however, struck a belligerent stand by rebuffing both its allies.
At a special press conference called by the party, spokesperson Shobha Oza said, "It is not for a political party to decide if Snoopgate should be probed or not. It is not a personal issue of any party. It is an issue of women's safety and if any party objects, then women of this country will disagree with it."
Oza said the BJP and Arun Jaitley had all along been mocking that the Centre could not find a judge for the inquiry commission. "Now, when there is a judge, they are so rattled," she said.
Her colleague Priyanka Chaturvedi lobbed 10 questions at Modi and his former home minister and confidant Amit Shah over the controversial stalking, key among them being why had the Gujarat CM not disclosed that he knew the girl for at least five years before the surveillance was ordered. Referring to the claim that she was put under watch on her father's "oral request", Congress asked how many other young girls were put under surveillance on the request of their parents.
Pawar's dissent came amid mounting indications of an intense search by Congress ministers for a judge to operationalize the probe into alleged stalking.
0 comments:
Post a Comment