MESSAGE BOARD
NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Jethmalani blames AG for resignation, Sorabjee refutes

Law Minister Ram Jethmalani, who resigned from the Union Cabinet following a directive from Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on Sunday, squarely blamed Attorney General Soli Sorabjee for his ouster but the top law officer shot back saying Jethmalani was himself responsible for his exit.

"He (Sorabjee) is the singlemost factor responsible for the resignation," Jethmalani told reporters in Pune and accused him of not coming to his defence in the Supreme Court on Friday during the hearing on the report of the Srikrishna Commission which probed the 1992-93 communal riots in Bombay.

Jethmalani, whose resignation was accepted on Sunday by President K R Narayanan, said he was 'unhappy' with Vajpayee who had to choose between 'a pliant Attorney General and a no-nonsense law minister'.

The prime minister sought Jethmalani's resignation after he hit out at Supreme Court Chief Justice A S Anand for criticising some union ministers for speaking at variance with the stand of the Union Government on the Bal Thackeray prosecution case.

He said, "my resignation had nothing to do with the observations made by the Chief Justice or the case against Bal Thackeray. I cannot exist in the cabinet with an Attorney General like this. Right from the day I became the law minister, he had started giving pinpricks," Jethmalani said.

However, Sorabjee rejected Jethmalani's charges saying the former law minister was himself to blame for his ouster.

Sorabjee said, "Jethmalani knows the reasons for his resignation. He did not require my help for his exit from the ministry. Jethmalani has an inexhaustible store of pinpricks, the recent example of which is his intemperate criticism of the Chief Justice of India and the Supreme Court in his press statement issued after the court proceedings."

Refuting Jethmalani's charge that he did not defend him properly in the court, Sorabjee said, "In fact, I retrieved the situation by reiterating the government's previous stand on the affidavit and persuaded the court not to record its oral observations in the order."

Jethmalani said he has 'many disappointments with the prime minister but I don't want to express them now'.

Authoritative sources said Vajpayee's decision to ask Jethmalani to resign was the culmination of his displeasure over the former minister's 'continuous problems' with the top tier of the judiciary over a period of time.

Vajpayee had, in the past, conveyed his displeasure to Jethmalani about his continuing problems with the Chief Justice of India, A S Anand, they said. The latest one being on the language used by Jethmalani in his series of correspondence with the Chief Justice over appointment of Justice B M Lal as chairman of the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission.

However, the open criticism of the CJI by the law minister in a statement from Bombay was 'the clincher' which made the prime minister very angry and seek Jethmalani's resignation, they said.

Tell us what you think of this report