BackNever asked UK govt to favour Lalit Modi: Sushma Swaraj
External affairs minister makes emotional statement in Lok Sabha, challenges opposition to get proof against her
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New Delhi: House disrupted. Congress members suspended. Key legislations stuck. The Lalit Modi controversy is an issue that the opposition has not let die, forcing the minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj on Thursday to make an emotional statement in the Lok Sabha.
Speaking in the House, Swaraj challenged the opposition that has been demanding her resignation for proof even though the Congress and several other opposition parties were absent.
“Today I challenge anyone who can produce a letter or email that says that I have asked the British government to present Lalit Modi with travel papers," she said, adding that she put in “no request or recommendation" to the UK government for giving travel documents to Modi.
Swaraj is facing allegations that she had helped the tainted former cricket administrator in securing travel documents to visit his ailing wife in Portugal, ignoring charges pending against him in India.
Modi, a former commissioner of the Indian Premier League, fled to London in 2010 after Enforcement Directorate initiated investigations against him for suspected foreign exchange irregularities.
Swaraj said her intervention for Modi was on humanitarian grounds and that she has never recommended or requested the British government to favour Modi for travel documents.
“Lalit Modi’s wife had been diagnosed with cancer for the tenth time and doctors said this time her cancer is life threatening," she said, adding, “Would you (speaker) or the leader of the Congress party Sonia Gandhi leave her to die?"
“All I wrote was that if the (British) government chooses to give travel documents to Lalit Modi, that does not spoil the bilateral relations between the two countries," Swaraj added.
But the Congress rejected Swaraj’s statements. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government first murdered democracy by suspending 25 MPs and effectively expelled the entire opposition from Lok Sabha. Arrogance of power reached its zenith today when it brazenly asked foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj to explain away her unpardonable impropriety, wilful lies, criminal intent, gross misuse of office and patent conflict of interest in garb of ‘humanitarian grounds’ to help Lalit Modi—an Indian fugitive accused of black money laundering, hawala, match-fixing and rigging of contracts," Anand Sharma, senior Rajya Sabha member and Congress spokesperson told reporters.
Political analysts say that an emotional speech will have little appeal at a time when the opposition is missing from the House. “In this kind of a situation, an emotional appeal has no place. It is coming from someone at a very high position. It is not justified and giving an escape route," said Bidyut Chakrabarty, political analyst and professor at Delhi University.
“This session the BJP is getting a taste of their own medicine," he said.
For the third day in a row, the opposition including the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Left parties boycotted the House over a five-day suspension of 25 Lok Sabha Congress MPs.
Despite the boycott, the House passed the Repealing and Amending (Fourth) Bill, 2015. The bill seeks to repeal 295 obsolete Acts which have been declared redundant by the ministries involved. This is done to clean and update statute books along with correcting defects in laws.
The ruling party on Thursday also moved a privilege motion against the demonstrations by the Indian Youth Congress, the youth wing of the Congress, which agitated outside Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan’s residence.
“It is an assault on parliamentary democracy and appropriate actions should be taken. I don’t think anybody can dispute this matter. Never has this happened in the history of independent India," said minister for parliamentary affairs M. Venkaiah Naidu in the Lower House while requesting Mahajan to admit the motion.
Congress MPs meanwhile continued their protest at the Parliament complex. “Our voice is being suppressed in Parliament," Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said while agitating against the suspension.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi raised the issue of chief ministers of North-East not being consulted on the Naga Peace accord. “Nobody has even bothered to brief them, perhaps not in detail, but in a wide sense. After all, our chief ministers are directly affected, be it Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh or Assam. So, what do I take from this? From this I take that this government is arrogant," she told reporters.
The Congress is in power in the north-east states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram.
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