BJP attacks Sonia on corruption

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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday defended its president Nitin Gadkari’s comments against Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, and said her claim of fighting corruption was “hollow”.

“A cornered Congress has become deeply frustrated as far as the issue of corruption is concerned, and therefore the kind of uncivilised comments which have been made against our party president Nitin Gadkari is deeply regrettable and condemnable,” BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

“We are very proud of our president who commenced his political life as a simple party worker and rose to become the national president. The Congress on the contrary is deeply steeped in “durbar” culture where the president can only be one born in “the” family,” he told reporters here. On June 15, Gadkari questioned Sonia Gandhi’s democratic credentials and said she her promise to fight corruption should be compared with Pakistan’s pledge to battle terrorism.

The Congress called his comments “gutter-level politics” and said Gadkari was unfit to head any political party. “Whatever is said against Sonia Gandhi — that her claim to fight against corruption is hollow — what is wrong about that?” Prasad asked, adding he wants to know why she “remained quiet” when the 2G and the Commonwealth Games scams came to light.

“When70,000 crores of public money was being looted in the Commonwealth Games and when the Shunglu Committee report was lambasted by Sheila Dikshit, you kept quiet. When files of the Adarh Corporative scam went missing from the ministry of defence under curious circumstances, you remained quiet,” he said. “The people of the country know that your government will not take any action against corruption because if you do so, a lot of skeletons of your own people will come out of the cupboard,” Prasad said.