The campaign for the ouster of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was on August 12 met with a strong counter-offensive when she launched a no-holds-barred attack on Congress, accusing it of having taken money to help alleged Bofors middleman Ottavio Quattrocchi and then Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson flee India even as the government rejected the demand for her resignation.
Taking the floor after a
number of searching questions were raised by Congress group leader
Mallikarjun Kharge, Swaraj's charges against late prime minister Rajiv
Gandhi and his government and the attack on Rahul Gandhi
escalated further tensions between the Opposition and government as a
washed-out session of Parliament comes to an end on Thursday.On the penultimate day of the month-long session, which was paralysed over the Congress' demand for Swaraj's resignation, the two sides settled for a discussion on an adjournment motion that was, to say the least, acrimonious.
At the end of the day, the adjournment motion was defeated by a voice vote after Congress walked out of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jatiley rejected the demand for her resignation saying all the allegations against "are baseless."
Here is how the chaotic day unfolded in the Parliament:
Kharge, who moved an adjournment motion, raised a number of queries over Swaraj's help to former IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi, a "fugitive", in getting travel document "in stealth" to go outside London when law enforcement agencies were looking for him here. Kharge, with Rahul Gandhi listening keenly behind him, said that Swaraj had aided an economic offender bypass the law.
"Despite knowing everything against him, why did she help him?" Kharge said. "Your relations with him were very deep...We are alleging that what you have done is illegal," Kharge said.
The Congress leader said that Swaraj hadn't pursued the Blue Corner notice against him since her family was representing him as lawyers.
He accused her of being involved in conflict of interest because her husband and daughter were lawyers for Modi, which she rejected saying the two did not appear in the case of Modi's passport cancellation and did not take a single rupee as fees.
Kharge also lashed out at the prime minister. "There is no point in this debate unless the prime minister is present," he said. "The prime minister has shut his eyes, mouth and ears to this controversy," he added.
"Prime Minister earlier used to say, 'Na khaaonga, na khaane doonga' (Neither will I engage in corruption nor will I allow others to do so). Now he says, 'tum khaate jaao, main dekhte rehta hoon,'" said the Congress leader.
Sushma Swaraj's scathing reply to the Congress
"I didn't do anything wrong. If helping a woman who has not been involved in any crime is wrong, then I admit I have done something wrong," Sushma Swaraj said in her statement.
"Why are they turning a non-issue into an issue? Khargeji said that my family members are Lalit Modi's lawyers. But my husband was not a lawyer of Lalit Modi in the passport case," Swaraj said in the Parliament amid uproar by the Opposition. "My daughter did not take even a single penny from Lalit Modi in this case as she was the ninth junior member in a team of 11," she said.
Swaraj then attacked the Congress and alleged that it was then Finance Minister P Chidambaram who was involved in conflict of interest.
"I want to tell Opposition members what conflict of interest is," Swaraj said. She said the "conflict of interest" was when Chidambaram headed the Ministry of Finance and his wife Nalini was made the lawyer for the I-T department.
Things got personal when Swaraj spoke against Rahul Gandhi and asked to enquire with his mother (Congress president Sonia Gandhi) on how much cash changed hands while protecting Quattrocchi and Anderson. Her attacks even did not spare Congress governments in the past, including the one headed by Rahul's late father Rajiv Gandhi.
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