Cong leader sought help for Coalgate accused: Sushma

Buoyed by staunch support from the BJP top brass, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday threatened to reveal the name of a senior Congress leader who sought diplomatic passport for Santosh Bagrodia, an accused in the coal scam.

Bagrodia was a minister of state for coal during UPA I regime and has been made an accused in one of the FIRs filed by the CBI. Sushma’s revelation through two tweets was seen as an attempt to soften the Opposition which is unabashedly demanding her resignation for influencing a British diplomat to help disgraced former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi obtain travel documents to visit his ailing wife in Portugal.

Sushma's confidence matched the BJP's aggression as the party prepared its MPs to have a tit-for-tat slanging match on corruption by “exposing” six Congress chief ministers reportedly involved in scams. Proceedings in both the Houses were washed out on Wednesday despite the government agreeing for a discussion on the controversy surrounding the external affairs minister.

Inside Parliament, the BJP tasked its MPs to give notices seeking discussion on scandals faced by Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and its chief ministers in Karnataka, Kerala, Assam and Uttarakhand.  Outside, the party fielded three ministers to hold press conferences on these issues.  Sources close to Bagrodia said that the former Union minister had applied for a diplomatic passport but found “nothing wrong” in it.

 “Anyone who has been an MP and whose passport is 10 years old can legally apply for it. What can a diplomatic passport do anyway - just help skip the queue?” they said.
While the Congress president refused to comment, her party stated, “There is a world of difference between making a request for an Indian’s passport and helping with a fugitive's passport.” A senior minister confessed that many in the government, including him, came to know about Sushma’s tweets after the BJP parliamentary party meeting in the morning. But her tweets became a matter of discussion even in the prime minister’s office, since as per their assessment, it lead to an embarrassed Congress calling off their agitation inside the Parliament complex.

Sushma was also given an opportunity to address party MPs at the meeting. Speaking in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah and other senior party colleagues, a confident and emotional Sushma said she would “tear into pieces” the Congress by exposing individual instances of its leaders seeking shocking out of turn privileges.

Shah told party MPs, who were given two booklets on “saga of scams in Congress-ruled states” and on Vyapam scam, that he has gone through official documents and found nothing against Sushma, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan.