Former Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Vinod Rai has kicked up a major controversy by claiming that certain UPA leaders approached him with pleas to drop the names of some political functionaries in his report on Coalgate and CWG scam.
The BJP has demanded that the identity of leaders who “approached him” during the UPA rule must be revealed and the Congress described the “disclosures” as belated “nuggets of sensationalism”.
The BJP said that Rai’s disclosures have vindicated its stand that then UPA Government was not only misusing constitutional bodies, but was also putting pressure on them.
“We want the Congress to reveal the names of those who were putting pressure on the former CAG. Who were those people who had established contacts with Vinod Rai and went to his homeIJ” party spokesperson Bizay Sonkar Shastri said. He said the Opposition party stood “exposed” as charges against the previous UPA Government made by the BJP “have been proved true”.
Rai, whose book is due for release in September, has claimed that UPA functionaries deputed politicians to get him to leave out names from the auditor’s reports on Coalgate and Commonwealth Games scams.
“PM has to take the last call which sometimes he did, sometime he did not. Governance cannot be sacrificed at the altar of compulsion of coalition politics”, the former CAG was quoted as saying in his book He reportedly said in his book, “Politicians came to my home and told me not to name some people and protect some others in connection with the CWG and coal allocation reports, but the real pressure which came to me in Parliament during the public accounts committee meeting”.
lashing out at Rai for his claim that he was pressurised to drop names of those involved in scams during the UPA regime, Congress party said “sensationalising” things has been his staple. “If at all, he was under any pressure or he was being coerced either obliquely, directly, implicitly that certain people be named and others deleted, was it not incumbent upon him to make it public at that point of time,” party leader Manish Tewari told newspersons.
He said Rai was perhaps “saving these little nuggets of sensationalism for what is a post-retirement pension plan these days - that you write and create enough sensationalism around it”. Criticising the former CAG, senior NCP leader Tariq Anwar said if Rai was under any kind of pressure, he should have spoken then itself and made it public.
JD(U) also questioned the timing of the disclosure, saying if Rai would have revealed it before, it would have been taken more “seriously”. “He should have disclosed the matter before. It would have been Rs taken more seriously,” party leader Ali Anwar said, but noted that Rai’s disclosure was not clear as to whether he was under any pressure. Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agarwal went on claiming that Rai appears to be inclined on joining the BJP. He suggested that “guidelines should be framed” against these kind of people so that “they do not indulge in this kind of sensationalism.”