NEW DELHI: After Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi targetted her, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj retorted that she never recommended travel documents for former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi, but rather “left this” to London to decide as per their own law.
Again taking to twitter, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said, “I am saying this time and again that I never requested or recommended travel documents for Lalit Mod”.
"I left this to the UK government to decide under their own laws and regulations. And that is what they did," she added.
Later in the string of tweets, she said that she had only facilitated Modi’s travel, as his wife was seriously ill. “The lady is suffering from cancer for the last 17 years, This was the 10th recurrence of Cancer,” she tweeted.
Swaraj pointed out, “I help people every day. That too on a single tweet.”
Asked if she had telephoned British politician Keith Vaz to allow the British government to let Lalit Modi travel to London, she said: "This is absolutely false."
Speaking about her silence, she tweeted that she had offered to make a statement in parliament, but there was no debate.
"As a minister I am accountable to Parliament. That is the only forum to inform the nation,” tweeted Swaraj.
On June 14, Swaraj tweeted early morning that “taking a humanitarian view”, she had told the British high commissioner to India James Bevan that if UK “chooses to give travel documents to Lalit Modi, that will not spoil our bilateral relations”.
“Keith Vaz also spoke to me and I told him precisely what I told the British High Commissioner,” she had tweeted last month.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had described her action as “criminal”, which had led to BJP leader Nitin Gadkari to demand an apology.
Parliament was completely dysfunctional this week after opposition refused to let proceedings continue as they demanded the resignation of Sushma Swaraj, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje and Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Chauhan over various controversies.
Meanwhile, MEA has again refused to give replies to a Right to Information query about Lalit Modi last week. The queries were again a copy of the seven questions posed by Congress leader P Chidambaram related to Lalit Modi. Earlier on June 26, MEA had similarly rebuffed the same questions posed in another RTI query.
MEA had argued that the questions while some of the questions did not fall under purview of RTI act, there were no information available with EAM’s office about the rest.