Skeleton of Congress's corruption tumbling out: BJP

The "skeleton of Congress's corruption" is now tumbling out, said the BJP Sunday following former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai's revelations that he was pressurised by the former UPA government to drop names from CAG reports.

"It is now shamelessly evident that the Congress had indulged in vast loot of public money and they tried to shield their ministers," BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told IANS.

"The skeleton of Congress's corruption is now tumbling out with a fresh case of their wrongdoings coming to light every day," he added.

In an interview to The Times of India Saturday, Rai said UPA functionaries had sent certain politicians to him who demanded that he not include certain names in his reports on the Coalgate and Commonwealth Games scams.

Rai seconded the allegations made by former prime minister Manmohan Singh's media advisor Sanjay Baru and former minister Natwar Singh, who both wrote in their memoirs that Manmohan Singh did not wield real power in the former United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

The Bharatiya Janata Party demanded that Manmohan Singh should come clean on the issue and explain what transpired during the 10 years of UPA rule.

Naqvi said: "The UPA government, in particular the Congress, misused lot of constitutional institutions and bodies. Rai's allegations is one of the examples of such misuse."

He, however, remained sceptical that Manmohan Singh would make any statement over the controversy.

"When he (Manmohan Singh) was the prime minister, he had been speaking only on the direction of the super prime minister (alluding to Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi). I don't know whether he would speak on this issue or not," Naqvi said.