The Leader of the Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Ajay Singh on Saturday brought in the public domain the letter he had written to senior BJP leader L.K. Advani on July 7 to draw attention towards his campaign against corruption and requested him to address the issue of corruption, which according to him has spread its tentacles from top to bottom in the state.
At the end of a seven-day deadline and in the absence of any response from Mr Advani, the Opposition leader released to the press his letter asking the BJP leader to intervene so that the people could get chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s reply to the 11 questions they had asked after the income-tax raids on two business houses in June.
Mr Singh has pointed out in his letter that Sudhir Sharma, the owner of one of the business groups targeted by the income-tax department holds the dual posts of convenor, state BJP education cell, and chairman of the state-owned CRISP and is also close to senior RSS functionary Suresh Soni and state BJP president Prabhat Jha. The other businessman Dilip Suryavanshi has close family ties with the chief minister.
Mr Singh has said that in his capacity as the Leader of the Opposition, it was his duty to ask the chief minister to answer the questions that were directly linked to him. He has also brought to Mr Advani’s notice that attempts to ask these questions through newspaper advertisements were blocked by those in authority and even billboards used for this purpose were destroyed.