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Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
Sacked Uttar Pradesh energy minister Naresh Agarwal said on Wednesday that he is ready to face any probe to clear the charges of corruption being levelled against him.
"Let the chief minister order any inquiry against me, let him probe my assets, it does not bother me," asserted Agarwal.
But the former energy minister said, "The assets of other ministers, including Bhartiya Janata Party ministers, should also to be probed."
Perched in the Loktantrik Congress Party headquarters and crowded by his supporters, who periodically went into euphoric outbursts of 'Naresh Agarwal zindabad' 'Naresh tum sangharsh karo, hum tumhare saath hain' Agarwal sarcastically remarked, "I was not dishonest until I remained with the government, now suddenly I am being branded as corrupt and dishonest."
In an exclusive interview to rediff.com, he said, "If I were corrupt, then what was Rajnath Singh doing was doing for the last 10 months since he took over as chief minister?"
"Sure enough, whatever the chief minister was contemplating against me and the way he was condemning the energy department was out of sheer vindictiveness and nothing else. Otherwise why should he be turning a blind eye to the rampant corruption in a whole lot of other ministries?" questioned a visibly livid Agarwal.
Agarwal wanted to know why Rajnath Singh 'hushed up' the inquiry report of the Rs 1 billion Ambedkar Park scam, in which two senior BJP ministers had been 'directly indicted'.
He alleged, "There was a minister who had been found to be associating with the notorious bandit Dadua and another one who was found indulging in gun-running and storing RDX."
He said, "At the party's last state executive meet in Saharanpur, the BJP leadership had resolved to weed out corrupt ministers. Let the chief minister come out with the action he had taken so far against the tainted ministers."
He said, "If the chief minister was really sincere about building a clean image for himself, he should declare his views about all other ministers."
Claiming the 'ideological support' of 'at least 10 ministers' belonging to his party, Agarwal hit out at the chief minister for what he termed as 'horse-trading'.
He alleged Rajnath Singh was 'buying' his supporters.
"But still there were five party MLAs who had resigned from their ministerial posts to back me," he added.
However, he could not produce the resignation letter of even a single minister.
He said, "Dissolution of the state assembly and imposition of President's rule was the need of the hour."
He added that was the only way to prevent horse-trading.
He said, "I have already urged the state governor Vishnu Kant Shastri to heed our demand."
He, however, lamented, "Considering that the governor has already expressed his views that there was no need to ask Rajnath Singh to prove his majority on the floor of the assembly, even the governor's impartiality is in doubt."
Agarwal shot off a new dimension to his feud with Rajnath Singh when he said, "Basically we had strong differences over the date of the election."
He added, "While I had been insisting that state assembly poll be held before the five-year term expires in October, the chief minister refused to go for elections before March 2002, by giving out the argument that since the assembly had remained in suspended animation for the first six months, the five-year term would end only in March 2002."
Agarwal claimed that this led to a heated argument, which ultimately led to his ouster.
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