NEW DELHI: Referring to the dropping of the FERA proceedings against Mr. Ajitabh Bachchan by the government, the Janata Party president Mr. Ajit Singh, today described the Rajiv Gandhi regrime as a “government of the Prime Minister’s friends, by his friends and to his friends.”
According to the Janata Party president, “In pursuance of his friends wellbeing, Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi’s government has not only made a “mockery” of the existing laws of the land but had also resorted to pushing through Parliament new laws like the Defamation Bill to prevent the exposure of their “misdeeds” by the press.
Mr. Singh said that laws were being violated or relaxed by the government to accommodate the
Prime Minister’s friends. He said the assumption seemed to be that the friends of the Prime Minister could do no wrong in spite of all evidence of the violation of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act receiving of illegal commission or the existence of other tax irregularities.
According to Mr. Ajit Singh, instead of enacting more strigent laws against economic offenders, the “ruling coterie” had chosen to stifle the media by bringing in the Defamation Bill. He called upon the workers of the Janata Party as well as of other likeminded opposition parties to come forward to oppose the “nefarious designs of this corrupt regime.”
Article extracted from this publication >> September 16, 1988
