Opposition party BJP on Friday said that cooperation and confrontation could not go hand in hand, in a flagrant reply to the UPA-led Government’s efforts to reach a consensus on the present Parliament logjam.
Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath approached BJP parliamentary party chief L K Advani in an apparent bid to find a way out of the current parliament impasse, and also seeking its cooperation with the early passage of financial bills.
However, Advani advised Nath to get the opinion of Lok Sabha Opposition Leader Sushma Swaraj who is now campaigning in Karnataka. Sushma is expected to return to the national capital on Monday.
Advani also said that the present JPC report draft, which has already hit the rough weathers, on 2G should not be adopted. Though the government managers have been making some concerted effort to broker peace with the BJP, Rajya Sabha Opposition Leader Arun Jaitley said cooperation and confrontation could not go hand in hand.
Meanwhile, party general secretary Rajiv Pratap Rudy, who has been with Jaitley for most of the day, said the “rest of the Parliament session would be wasted because of government’s intransigence”.
While the BJP is up in arms against the leaked JPC report that also makes references to the Atal Bihari Vajpayee era “for having caused losses to the national exchequer”, the CBI affidavit in the Supreme Court on Friday gave a shot in the arm to the party.
The party argued that the “agency had agreed that the status report on coal scam was shared with the Law Minister as desired by him”.
The party demanded that the Prime Minister, Law Minister and the Coal Minister should make their conduct amply clear in this matter to Parliament.
Jaitley also said that he wanted to know if the CBI report was altered by the Law Minister and what was the level of interference.
He said the earlier drafts of the report should be checked to find this out and insisted that the government make a categorical statement on whether any email on this issue was exchanged between the PMO and the Coal Ministry.
Meanwhile, senior party leader Jaswant Singh said: “It is clearly evident that there was political interference and premature disclosure of the report to the officials of the PMO, Law and Coal Ministries. This is a violation of the Supreme Court’s directives.”