Goa Contract Bribery Case: BJP Seeks to Drag Top Congress Brass

BJP sought to drag Congress top brass into Goa contract bribery case involving a US firm.

NEW DELHI: BJP today sought to drag the top brass of Congress into the Goa contract bribery case involving a US firm, saying that it wonders how much of "loot" the ruling family has "shared" as it demanded a CBI probe into the matter.

Terming as "pseudo-aggression" and "cries of a lost child" its attack on party leaders, including Sushma Swaraj, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje, BJP also asked Congress to behave like an "adult" over its threat of stalling Parliament during the Monsoon Session beginning tomorrow.

With the BJP top brass deciding to aggressively counter Congress, party spokesperson M J Akbar alleged involvement of its ruling family in the bribery case involving the US firm to win a contract in Goa when the Congress government was in power.

"Since this is Congress, we would like to know how much of this loot was shared upwards to the ruling family in Delhi," he told reporters at a briefing where he read from the US probe document which, he said, made it a "proven" case of bribery.

The alleged bribery of USD 976,630 for the project by US firm Louis Berger included that to a minister, the details of which have not been disclosed by the US Department of Justice, and Akbar said it was only the tip of the iceberg.

The bribe money was paid only till August 2010 and the BJP demands "a full scale CBI probe into how much more money was paid and to whom." Fingers pointed directly at Digambar Kamat, former Goa chief minister, he alleged.

Asked if BJP would sack its ministers and chief ministers if Congress took action against it leaders, he said there was no comparison between the charges levelled by the Opposition party and the Goa bribery case as one was an accusation while other a case of "prove corruption".

"I am not talking about accusations. It's a judgement," he said, noting that the matter was probed by the FBI in the US.

He said people have started seeing through the negativity and pseudo-aggression of Congress against its leaders over issues like Vyapam scam and Lalit Modi controversy.

"When there is nothing to say, they shout. A lost child cries... One hopes it will grow up, become an adult," he said.

Taking a dig at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi over his assertion that he would not allow an inch of land to be acquired under the contentious land law proposed by the BJP government, Akbar said Gandhi must have meant thousands of bighas of land "stolen" by his brother-in-law Robert Vadra or the land his sister Priyanka Gandhi had in Himachal Pradesh.

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