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December 12, 2003
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Friday
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Shawwal 17, 1424
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Lok Sabha in uproar over corruption
NEW DELHI, Dec 11: India’s parliament erupted in uproar on Thursday over two corruption scandals in tribal Chattisgarh state which separately nailed a leader of the opposition and one of the ruling party.
The first scam, which broke a week before the December 1 polls in Chattisgarh, involved federal environment minister Dilip Singh Judeo who quit after video footage showed him taking cash from a businessman seeking a mining contract.
Mr Judeo was the star campaigner of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which at the time was in opposition in Chattisgarh.
A week later, a second scam hit the Congress party which had been ruling in the state but exit polls for assembly elections showed its hold on power was threatened in the central state.
On an audio tape released by the BJP, Chief Minister Ajit Jogi is heard apparently offering bribes to BJP legislators to break away and join him.
Jogi lost the elections and the BJP has since formed a government in the state. He was also suspended from the Congress party.
Since then, the two scams have dominated newspaper headlines.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Vajpayee, who took the floor in the lower house, attacked the opposition for accusing the government of double standards over its handling of the scams.
“What double standards are you talking about?” Vajpayee asked.
“What touchstones are you talking about? Don’t you see Jogi peeping from behind the curtain?”
He said despite his minister getting caught in the scandal, the people of Chattisgarh had voted for the BJP.
“Why did we get a landslide victory in Chattisgarh? It is because people have lost faith in you (Congress) and have some left in Judeo.”
Opposition members interrupted Vajpayee several times, accusing him of double standards.
“The government and Prime Minister Vajpayee are not sincere to the people of the country,” Congress member Kapil Sibal said in the upper house, adding Jogi’s case was being dealt with much more swiftly than Judeo’s.—AFP
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