Lalit Modi visa row: Congress questions PM Modi's silence

Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday asked whether External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj acted on the orders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and helped former IPL chairman Lalit Modi receive the travel documents.

Kharge, who is the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, also asked Prime Minister Modi to issue a clarification on the matter.

"Did (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi ask the External Affairs Ministry to give the recommendation? After all, she works under him. If the Prime Minister is silent over the issue, did he give consent? He should issue a statement and clarify the matter," Kharge told ANI here.

"Sushma Swaraj, on humanitarian grounds, as the External Affairs Minister has helped Lalit Modi. There are similar cases in the country that she should then take up on such grounds. A person against whom the Enforcement Directorate ( ED) probe is going on and on whom the previous government had put an extortion probe, if the Foreign Minister is helping out such a person, is it under the advice of the Prime Minister. Is she acting as per his advice?" he asked.

The External Affairs Minister had earlier admitted to helping Lalit Modi with his travel documents, but made it clear that she did so only on humanitarian grounds.

Amid calls for her resignation by the opposition parties, Swaraj tried to clarify her position via a series of tweets.

Swaraj said that she took a humanitarian view of Modi's case since his wife was suffering from cancer.

"Taking a humanitarian view, I conveyed to the British High Commissioner that "British Government should examine the request of Lalit Modi as per British rules and regulations. If the British Government chooses to give travel documents to Lalit Modi that will not spoil our bilateral relations," she tweeted.