Arjun blames Rao for government lapses
NEW DELHI: Expelled Congress Ieader Arjun Singh has blamed the party leadership for having Failed on the three major issues of Ayodhya demolition, securities scandal and the Rajiv Gandhi assassination probe. Releasing his much-awaited 92 page reply to the Congress high command. Singh sounded unrepentant and unreconciled vowing to carry out his campaign “in my capacity as an ordinary Congress worker.” As the documents revealed, Singh in his correspondence with the Prime Minister other cabinet colleagues and some senior bureaucrats during his tenure as the human resource development (HRD) minister expressed serious dissatisfaction with the measures taken by the Government on those three major issues.
Singh regretted that the Government had not made enough efforts cither to expose the actual beneficiaries of an estimated Rs. 10,000 crore scam of respond to the Verma Commission’s charge of non-cooperation against the The intelligence Bureau or to safeguard the Babri Masjid.
In a letter lo the Home Minister, S.B. Chavan, on September 17 1994, Singh noted that “apart from the adverse comments that the (Verma) Commission has made against certain individuals the intelligence community the comes in for adverse observation by the Commission for what the Commission calls a contributory lapse on its part to share fully the entire information available to it.”
Singh urged the Home Minister to examine “what information was received by the Intelligence Bureau from its sub-ordinate office in Tamil Nadu which had the primary responsibility of collecting information and feeding the Headquarters of the Bureau.”
In another letter to Rao on December 19, 94. Singh expressed his unhappiness over the Government’s inability to find out those on whose behalf these assets have been held by the brokers, and those to whom funds have been made available by the brokers.”
I repeat my request that a (judicial) body such as the one suggested by me be entrusted to trace the end-use as well as end-users of the funds.” He regretted in the same letter that even the revised ATR fails to give cither the progress in respect of the analysis of the accounts or the date or period by when analysis would be completed in order to reach the real culprits.”
In a letter to the then cabinet secretary S. Rajgopal on November 21.92 Singh cautioned against allowing the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to resumo Kar Seva at Ayodhya. “It is obvious, however, that this temporary reprieve that they (VHP) want… is in fact a ruse to keep the option in their hand to spring a surprise on the nation at a time of their choice in the future.”
In his reply to the DAC Singh strongly refuted the charge of violating party discipline and on the contrary claimed that on many occasions his correspondence with Rao had been Locked out to the press from the other end. Ho, in fact, reproduced his carrier letters to the Prime Minister complaining how the deliberations of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) had appeared in the press.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 17, 1995
