PM gets clean chit from bengal cm on 2G scam

At a time when the Prime Ministerm, Manmohan Singh, is facing the flak from the Opposition on the way he is dealing with 2G and Commonwealth Games scams, he got support from an unexpected quarter on Friday. Contrasting his party’s stand, West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee came out in public and backed the PM noting him as a man of ‘honesty and integrity.

“On corruption cases which is coming out now, I personally believe that the Prime Minister is an honest man. There is no doubt that he is a man of integrity. But there is something wrong with the system,” Bhattacharjee said, during the 24th Industrial India Trade Fair in Kolkata.

This come at a time when the CPI(M) had accused the Manmohan Singh government of failure for curbing “corruption” and the winter session of Parliament was disrupted by Opposition parties demanding a Joint Parliamentary committee (JPC) probe on the telecom scam.

However, training guns on power brokers, politicians and corporate India, who were allegedly involved in the scam, he said, “Corporates, politicians, even media persons acted as power brokers. They looted a huge sum of money. More than Rs 1,76,000 crore.”

He expressed his anguish over the stands taken on industrialisation and development by opposition parties such as the Trinamool Congress in the state. “In most of the states, governments' and opposition parties unite in the matter of industrialisation and development. But here, opposition is just for opposing everything. I am trying my bit for development. Both sides should work jointly,” he said.

At the same time, he was critical on the Centre’s economic policies. Speaking on the country’s positive gross domestic product (GDP) numbers, he said, “The country’s current GDP growth figures are encouraging. But only GDP growth won’t do, there are larger problems like poverty and unemployment, which the government should solve.”