BJP to step up campaign

The Bharatiya Janata Party will strengthen its campaign against the Union government and the Congress party on the issue of corruption, said Arun Jaitley, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, soon after a meeting of the party’s core committee.

He said a resolution on the issue would be passed at the party’s national executive meeting, starting in Guwahati on Saturday. The leadership was, he said, devising strategy on the matter.

The BJP has been trying to stir a nationwide campaign encompassing the telecom spectrum controversy, the Adarsh housing scandal in Mumbai which cost the state chief minister jis job and the controversy over the recent Commonwealth Games in Delhi. The latest boost are the observations of the income tax appellate tribunalin the Bofors gun deal of the 1980s, that bribes were paid to Italian national Ottavio Quattrocchi.

“Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi are answerable to the people of the country and they should come out in the open to clear their stand, more so after what has come out in the findings of the income tax tribunal,” Jaitley said.

He alleged people close to senior members of the Congress party had received bribes in the Bofors deal. If the party was nhonest, he said, it should welcome the tribunal’s observations, as it would mean more revenue for the Union government.