The Hindu : Many Opposition leaders wrote for allotment: BJP

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 08, 2002

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Many Opposition leaders wrote for allotment: BJP

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 7. Cornered by the petrol pump allotment scandal, the Bharatiya Janata Party today launched a counter-attack. While it has not yet been able to produce the promised list of Congress beneficiaries of the petroleum largesse, it did produce a list of Opposition leaders who had written letters of "recommendation'' for allotment.

The BJP spokesperson, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, said the "list'' of leaders who had recommended allotment of petrol pumps and gas agencies included Manmohan Singh, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Motilal Vohra, Oscar Fernandes, Santosh Mohan Dev, Begum Noor Bano (all Congress), Basudev Acharya, P. Mohan (both CPI-M), Nagendra Ojha, Bhan Singh Bhaura, Ajay Chakravarty (all CPI), Ramdas Athavale (RPI) and Raj Babbar (SP).

However, Mr. Malhotra was neither able to say whether the letters of recommendations were for their relatives, nor was he able to say how many of them had got the allotments.

To another query, Mr. Malhotra said he had no knowledge whether the senior BJP leaders, Atal Behari Vajpayee or L.K. Advani as leaders of Opposition or as MPs had ever recommended allotment of petrol pumps or gas agencies to Congress Ministers.

"We are still trying to find out how many Congressmen and their relatives also got allotments in the last two years,'' he said.

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