BJP leader Sambit Patra
on Wednesday took a swipe at former finance minister P Chidambaram and said,
“He (Chidambaram) joins the coveted Club”.
As P
Chidambaram prepares to step out of Tihar jail, the Bharatiya Janata Party
responded to the Supreme Court order to grant him bail with a sharp jibe at the
senior Congress leader.
“So finally Chidambaram too joins the long
list of “OOBC (Out On Bail Club)” in the Congress,” BJP leader Sambit Patra
said, tweeting his party’s first response to the 74-year-old leader’s imminent
release from jail.
The BJP leader’s swipe echoes Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s frequent attacks at the Congress and its leadership
for criminal cases that accuse them of wrongdoing and corruption. “At present,
their top leadership is on bail vis-a-vis a major scam,” PM Modi wrote in a
blog ahead of the national elections this year.
In the
run-up to the Rajasthan state elections last year, PM Modi had said that some
people were calling the Congress ‘bail gaadi’, not bullock cart, “because some
of its top leaders and former ministers are on bail”.
“He (Chidambaram) joins the coveted Club,”
Patra said before listing Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Robert
Vadra, Bhupinder Hooda and Shashi Tharoor as some members of this group.
Chidambaram was arrested in August in the
INX Media case, first by the Central Bureau of Investigation and later, the Enforcement
Directorate. He was the finance minister in 2007 when the CBI alleges
irregularities in the government’s clearance to to INX Media group to receive
foreign funds.
Chidambaram had been granted bail by the
Supreme Court in one case in October. On Wednesday, a three-judge bench
accepted his appeal for bail. By the time that he would step out of Tihar jail
later today, the former minister would have spent 106 days in custody.
Chidambaram’s family and the Congress have
alleged that the arrest and the case against him was driven by vendetta
politics; because he was one of the sharpest critic of the government.
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari rejected the
charge. He told news agency ANI that the BJP-led national coalition had never
been vindictive. The Union road transport minister said there was evidence
against Chidambaram. “Now the matter is sub-judice and court will take the
decision,” he said.
The minister also reminded the Congress
about the cases filed against BJP leaders when it was in power. “On the other
hand when Chidambaram ji was Home Minister during Congress rule, he filed false
cases against me, he also filed false cases against Modi ji and Amit Shah ji.
Later, we all were proved innocent,” he said, according to ANI.
0 Comments