AAP: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Manish Tewari faced conflict of interest

Both dismiss allegations as baseless

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday alleged Union Telecommunications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Congress leader Manish Tewari had faced conflict of interest. It said both had received retainership fees from a private company.

"Prasad got fees from a company of Reliance Industries Ltd, or RIL, (Fine Tech Corporation Private Limited)," AAP said. It furnished the invoices raised by Prasad from April 2013 to March 2014. Prasad took charge of the law ministry and the telecom ministry from May 26 to November 10. He is holding the communications and information technology portfolio at present.

AAP demanded Prasad's resignation as they said before becoming a minister, Prasad had, as a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), examined matters which were of conflict of interest. "The allegation of AAP is misleading and is for cheap publicity. I never appeared for RIL," Prasad tweeted.

AAP said Tewari, a Union minister since 29 October 2012 in the previous United Progressive Alliance government, "was in a retainership agreement" with the firm.

"When his contract expired on June 30, 2012, he wrote to Parimal Nathwani (Rajya Sabha member and functionary in RIL) to get his contract extended till June 30, 2015. The contract got extended till June 30, 2014," AAP said.

AAP said Tewari was also a part of a JPC and spoke in "Parliament on issues of interest to these companies." Tewari dismissed these and uploaded documents on the termination of his "legal relationship", along with an acceptance letter from an RIL firm.

“Refer to the tweets enclosing (the) documents. Wish AAP gentlemen had spoken to me…would have given (the) correct picture,” Tewari tweeted.