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Congress stage walkout in RS over Bofors chargesheet

The Congress party staged a walkout in the Rajya Sabha today to protest against the inclusion of the late Rajiv Gandhi's name in the chargesheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation under column two in the Bofors gun payoff case. Dr Manmohan Singh raised the issue through a special mention and alleged that the name of the late leader was included in the chargesheet to malign him and the Congress party.

He said it was ''deliberately included'' as there was no evidence against Rajiv Gandhi nor was there any charge against him. His name had been listed with a malafide intention and there was a political conspiracy behind it, he said. He said even the Congress party wanted that the guilty be punished.

The leader of the House Jaswant Singh (Bharatiya Janata Party), however, made it clear that there was no ill-will nor any political agenda against anybody. The government wanted that the law should take its own course. He said the government in fact has sought legal opinion from the attorney general in this regard. The latter had advised the government that any direction from it would be tantamount to interference in the legal course of action as the CBI had already filed its chargesheet.

Jaswant Singh also disclosed that the attorney general in his advice to the government had stated that the late Rajiv Gandhi had not been framed under Section 321 on grounds of any criminal charges and no prosecution could be launched against him. Jaswant Singh's reply encouraged the Congress members to enquire from the chair that when the late Rajiv Gandhi could not be prosecuted then why was his name being included. At this, Manmohan Singh expressed his dissatisfaction with the reply by the leader of the House and led his party to stage a walkout. Jaswant Singh regretted the move.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee today cited the attorney general's opinion, a copy of which has been tabled in the Lok Sabha, to once again reject the Congress' demand for deleting Rajiv Gandhi's name from the Bofors chargesheet. In a chat with newspersons after inaugurating a new press room at Parliament House, Vajpayee said the legal provisions cited for the deletion of Rajiv Gandhi's name ''did not apply'' because neither was the former prime minister named as an accused nor was there going to be any trial against him.

Earlier today the government informed the Lok Sabha that the attorney general had opined that it was impermissible in law for the government to direct deletion of the name of Rajiv Gandhi from the Bofors chargesheet. Intervening during zero hour after a mention in this regard by Congress member P R Das Munshi, Home Minister L K Advani said that the attorney general, on an opinion sought by the government, had also said that reference to section 321 of the code of the criminal procedure relating to such direction was misconceived.

Advani also said that investigation in the Bofors case was still continuing and therefore there was no question of anyone being let off.

UNI

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