The Supreme Court’s clean-chit to Finance Minister P Chidambaram has come as a shot-in-the arm for the UPA Government, which has been maintaining that the allegations were baseless. The UPA leadership has now decided to take a “strong position” against the BJP, which is demanding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s resignation over the CAG report on coal allocation.
The BJP reiterated that Chidambaram still remained constitutionally and politically accountable for the loss, even as the verdict came as a setback to its campaign against the UPA Government. The party said its members would continue to raise the issue of Chidambaram’s alleged involvement in the scam at the JPC (Joint Parliamentary Committee) meetings.
The verdict also upset the Government’s efforts to work out a truce with the BJP in running Parliament, which stands stalled. BJP sources said they would not participate in any discussion in the House and would stick to the demand for the Prime Minister’s resignation.
“The Monsoon Session has gone,” a BJP leader said. Earlier, there was an informal agreement that the Prime Minister would talk to Opposition leaders and will be allowed to make a statement in the House on the CAG reports.
For the record, the BJP said Chidambaram was a part of the decision-making process regarding the spectrum licence allocation. “He is constitutionally accountable, remains politically accountable and that is what we are seeking inside Parliament and will continue to seek in JPC,” BJP’s chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here.
The Left parties also said that they would ask the JPC to summon Chidambaram on the 2G issue.
Senior Congress leaders said the Supreme Court had upheld their stand that Chidambaram was innocent. “We are, of course, satisfied with the verdict. The court has granted relief to a learned colleague of ours,” the Law Minister, Salman Khurshid, said.