Govt not disclosing even what it can on Bofors, says BJP
The Bharatiya Janata Party's two top vote-catchers, A B Vajpayee and L K Advani, went on the offensive over the Bofors issue. Addressing the media in Varanasi and Ahmedabad respectively, the two leaders blamed the United Front government of not revealing even the findings of the Indian end of the investigations into the payoff scandal.
Vajpayee alleged that the United Front government was
''putting under a veil'' the findings of the Bofors enquiry only to
keep open the options of post-poll alliances.
Stating that Bofors has become the main issue in the election
campaign following Sonia Gandhi's demand to make the papers related to the howitzer deal public, Vajpayee, at a press conference,
demanded immediate action on the 250-page report submitted by the
special investigation team set up by the CBI to probe the
Bofors scandal.
Vajpayee termed as bogus the government claim that due
to certain obligations to Swiss courts and the Swiss government the
facts couuld not be made public. He said there was no legal hurdle
at least in publicising the outcome of inquiries done in India. The
CBI stand, pleading helplessness in releasing the documents, is also
objectionable and intriguing, he added.
He alleged that the UF government has shelved the CBI report
and sacked India's lawyer in Geneva whose persistence had resulted
in the despatch of crucial papers from Switzerland to India. He said
the SIT report, which was compiled on the basis of these papers,
recommended the prosecution of several people.
Vajpayee also wondered why no serious
attempts were being made to bring back Ottavio Quattrocchi to India.
He said if the chargesheet in the case had been filed in
time, the relevant Bofors documents would have become automatically
public.
''Even if we accept the government argument that the Bofors
papers cannot be made public unless they are required in a criminal
case, one wonders why no criminal case has been registered in a case
which concerned national security," he said.
In Ahmedabad, Advani said the people of the country had already given their
mandate on the Bofors issue in the 1989 Lok Sabha
election itself and Sonia Gandhi's attempts to rake
it up once again would not, in any way, affect the outcome
of the forthcoming election.
Addressing a crowded press conference after his arrival, he said India had, since 1971,
been witnessing elections centred on a single dominant issue
which overshadowed all others, and created waves. The Bofors
issue had created an anti-Congress wave in 1989 when the people
toppled the Rajiv Gandhi government.
Advani said although the Congress withdrew support from
the United Front government in the hope that the Jain Commission
report would create a pro-Congress wave, nothing of that sort
happened. ''Even Sonia Gandhi had not spoken on this issue.
On the contrary, she raised the Ayodhya issue once again and this
issue was still alive," he added.
Advani, who arrived on a two-day
visit of Gujarat to file his nomination papers from the Gandhinagar
Lok Sabha constituency, said her entry in the
Congress campaign had not stopped the exodus of
disillusioned Congressmen from the party.
According to him, neither the Sonia factor nor the Bofors
issue would be able to throw up a pro-Congress wave. The people
had already decided the issue at stake and it was a choice
between the BJP and another election, he asserted.
The BJP chief said his party had succeeded in identifying the
current election's decisive and dominant issue and it was the
people's desire to convert ''swaraj'' (self-government) into
''suraj'' (good government) in the 50th anniversary of India's
Independence.
Advani said the choice was no longer between the BJP and
the Congress or the BJP and the United Front but between the
''BJP and confusion'' and the ''BJP and a continuing instability''.
This time, a government would be formed principally because of
a positive vote, he asserted, adding the BJP was ''proud'' of
creating such an atmosphere in the country during the 18-
month rule of the United Front government at the Centre.
UNI
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