Flaying the Congress party and its general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who is also her late husband's nephew, Bhartiya Janata Party MP Maneka Gandhi said on Thursday, "The Congress party is neck deep in corruption to which Rahul Gandhi has always remained a mute spectator."
She was responding to Anna supporters who climbed on to her dais from where she was addressing a public meeting in her constituency, Aonla, about 280 km from Lucknow.
Asked to comment on Rahul Gandhi's silence on the all important issue of corruption, she shot back, "Well, what can he say when his whole party in thoroughly corrupt?" She went on to ask, "Has he ever opened his mouth on the issue of corruption?"
Declaring her whole-hearted support to Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal Bill, she said, "I am strongly of the view that the Jan Lokpal Bill be adopted by the Parliament."
Earlier, Anna protagonists made it loud and clear to her that they would continue to extend their support to her only on the condition that she would support the Jan Lokpal Bill.
However, it was felt that her support to Hazare's bill was also prompted by the fact that her son Varun Gandhi, a BJP MP from the neighbouring Pilibhit parliamentary constituency, had already tabled the Jan Lokpal Bill as a private bill before the Parliament.
Replying to another question about former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's name figuring in the Wikileaks list of those with huge amount of money in Swiss banks, Maneka Gandhi remarked, "Well it is really shameful that the government had failed to do anything to retrieve the tons of India's black money that was parked in Swiss banks; I see no reason why all that money cannot be brought back into the country."
