Allegations against Swaraj and Raje run counter to Govt. claims, says Yechury

Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Thursday said that the allegations against External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje with respect to the help given by them to former IPL chairman Lalit Modi are very serious and run counter to the anti-corruption claims of the government at the Centre.

"All the allegations that have come in the public discourse are very serious. They run counter to every claim this government had made to itself on the completion of its first year. It completely demolishes the government which is practicing transparency in governance and accountability that is now proved virtually that that is not correct that this government will take strong actions against money laundering, that is clearly completely exposed as not being the case, opposite is happening... All these need to be thoroughly probed and people must be held accountable."

"This 'humanitarian ground' is completely unacceptable, because everybody knows that Lalit Modi's wife was suffering from this disease for more than three years. Everybody knows that Portugal does not require consent for the spouse for any operation of this nature to be done so that humanitarian ground is also a very shabby cover that they are trying to use," he added.

Yechury also called for a probe into the matter and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak on the issue.

"Accountability should be fixed and the guilty should be punished. Till this probe is over, neither the foreign minister nor the chief minister of Rajasthan should continue to remain in office. There is nothing personal about it. Most of them are good friends of mine. That's a different matter. But in terms of holding public office, probity is probity," he said.

"The Prime Minister is the one who has been claiming the completion of one year, great deal of bombastic claims of about accountability, transparency, corruption free government. All these were their own claims. We are asking Prime Minister to stand by his own claims that he has made. We are seeing a very uncharacteristic Prime Minister, who has not spoken for a week on this issue."

In more trouble for the BJP which has been defending External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj so far despite opposition demands that she be sacked for helping Lalit Modi, the former IPL boss has claimed that Raje secretly supported his immigration plea in Britain.

Since this information came to light, the opposition has been clamouring for Raje's resignation.