Only a week before the commencement of the Budget Session, senior BJP leader L.K. Advani added to the worries of the Congress-led UPA government by announcing that his party will not be content with just a JPC on 2G spectrum allocation scam. Claiming that in the last meeting of the Opposition leaders with Union finance minister
Pranab Mukherjee, it had become apparent that the UPA government was now reconciled to a JPC on 2G spectrum scam, he said, “The idea is that if a JPC is constituted for 2G spectrum scam then only the DMK will be put in the dock and the Congress will escape. I must make it clear that the JPC must be ordered for all the scams, including the Commonwealth Games and defence housing (Adarsh apartment) scams. We will not be satisfied with anything less,” he added. Mr Advani was addressing a BJP workers’ rally at Shahid Minar in Kolkata.
Once again describing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the weakest Prime Minister, he said that he felt sorry for the Prime Minister. “In the run up to the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when I had called him a weak Prime Minister, some friends felt bad because they considered him a gentleman. I told them that if a good man was weak then he can never deal with corruption,” he added.
He claimed that it was for the first time in the history of the country that the Supreme Court ordered the Prime Minister to file an affidavit explaining why he had not responded to a letter on corruption-tainted Raja. “The apex court has repeatedly chastised the government and it was the court which forced it to send Raja to jail,” he added. He also slammed the UPA government for largescale phone-tapping. “Supreme Court had clearly said that phones of political leaders could be tapped only with the permission of the Union home ministry. Today, I read in the newspapers that over one lakh phones were tapped. The government must clarify on whose permission such a large number of phones were tapped. This is a threat to democracy,” he added.
Earlier, addressing a news conference, BJP leader Arun Jaitley said that tapping of such a huge number of phones was a matter of grave concern.
“Media reports have revealed that around one lakh telephone connections are being tapped. The figure is frightening. The law is very clear: telephone can be tapped only in extreme cases either for national security reasons or for prevention of crime involved,” Mr Jaitley said. He demanded an “authoritative clarification” from the Centre over tapping of one lakh phones.