Is it PMO or bailout office: BJP on Vadra clean chit

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday hit out at the Prime Minister's Office for giving a clean chit to Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra in the land deals with realty major DLF in Haryana and sought to know how it arrived at this conclusion without conducting any probe.

"Is it the Prime Minister's Office or a bailout office? We say this with full responsibility," BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

Prasad pointed out that several questions had been raised about the deals between Vadra and DLF -- including how his seed capital of Rs 50 lakh turned into Rs 300 crore within a short span of time, the controversy on an overdraft that Vadra claimed was given by Corporation Bank which the latter denied and how Congress governments in Rajasthan and Haryana had sprung to his defence.
   
The PMO has said, in an affidavit before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court, that the allegations regarding irregular land dealings between Vadra and DLF "appear to be false, based on hearsay and vexatious".
   
Asking how the PMO had reached this conclusion, Prasad said, "Did you conduct an inquiry? How can the PMO be used to shield corruption?"

BJP alleged that even in the past in other cases, the PMO had given a clean chit to individuals who faced charges later.

"In the case of former telecom minister A Raja, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, the Commonwealth Games scam and the coal-gate scam, the PMO had given a clean chit. The prime minister himself has been giving repeated certificates of innocence inside and outside Parliament," Prasad said.

He demanded that the PMO should come clear on who probed the charges against Vadra and how he was given a clean chit.