Congress party spokesperson Pawan Khera has on Friday said that the exposure of “conspirator-in-chief” Vinod Rai’s “lies” had also exposed all others who had joined him in maligning the Manmohan Singh government and helping Narendra Modi rise to power.
He identified these others as “Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev, Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi.”
The names of Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, two other members of India Against Corruption were left out by Khera as he believes both are trenchant critics of the Modi government.
Khera said the motivation and commitment of some of the key players of the anti-corruption movement can be easily analysed by having a look at where they are today.
Khera said, “Anna Hazare is comfortably nestled in his village, forgetting everything about Lokpal and corruption. Baba Ramdev has become Lala Ramdev, with a flourishing business, thanks to the blessings of the BJP.”
“Kejriwal is enjoying power, running a government in tandem with the Centre. The BJP tried to make Kiran Bedi the chief minister of Delhi but (after failing to do so) appointed her lieutenant governor of Puducherry. Gen. V.K. Singh became a central minister. All of them had publicly vowed never to join politics.”
Khera’s comments came against the backdrop of former CAG Rai offering an unconditional apology for incorrectly accusing former MP Sanjay Nirupam of pressuring him to remove Manmohan’s name from his report on 2G spectrum allocation.
“Vinod Rai was the conspirator-in-chief. You call him the main puppet as strings were pulled by the political master,” Khera said.
“If he has any sense of shame, he should relinquish whatever comforts and perks he got from the grateful Modi government. You can imagine what kind of lies he resorted to. The court itself dismissed all the charges in the 2G scam and acquitted everybody.”
Khera said a conspiracy had been hatched against the Manmohan government to destabilise a booming economy.
“The CBI gave a clean chit to Manmohan Singh on September 21, 2015, in the coal allocation case. The CBI’s counsel told the Supreme Court there was no dishonest intention whatsoever on the part of Singh,” he said.
“The media and the BJP created a political storm over the CAG reports. Where are the CAG reports today? Forget the media, they are not even discussed in Parliament.”
