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BJP: It’s not mudslinging

Special Correspondent

Distributes pamphlet against Pratibha

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday said it was not indulging in mudslinging against t Presidential candidate Pratibha Patil, even as it distributed a pamphlet containing various charges against her.

“Why was the BJP silent for the last two years and more during the period when she was Rajasthan Governor? Or is it that it was alright for a Governor to have not such a clean record?”

To these questions BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said: “These issues [allegations against Ms. Patil] were not raised then. But this does not mean there is an embargo on raising them now.”

The allegations come, when, in fact, the party was quoting from “documents” dating back to the Nineties.

The pamphlet, authored by the former Minister, Arun Shourie, and published by the party, said: “Ms. Pratibha Patil continued as founding chairperson [of the cooperative bank] right till the demise of the bank [in 2003].”

However, a Congress Minister said Ms. Patil was chairperson for a month and eight days in 1990.

The pamphlet quotes from a lengthy memorandum by the bank’s union suggesting that Ms. Patil was not on the board of directors or the chairperson when the bank was liquidated.

Mr. Prasad and Mr. Shourie backed their allegations of loans to relatives — which they said were never paid back — on the basis of charges by the union.

The Congress dismissed the charge as untrue, saying the union was backed by the BJP.

The pamphlet says the union wrote letters and sent a memorandum to “the then President [K.R. Narayanan], then Prime Minister [Atal Bihari Vajpayee], and to, among others, the then Leader of the Opposition Sonia Gandhi,” demanding an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

But Mr. Shourie does not explain in the pamphlet what the Vajpayee Government did about the union’s complaints.

Mr. Prasad dismissed the Prime Minister’s description of the allegations as mudslinging, saying it was “legitimate” for it to quote a Reserve Bank of India order for liquidation of the bank (dated 25 February 2003).

He further alleged that the money collected from employees as contribution towards a Kargil Fund were never deposited with the Government — that was in 1998-99 when the BJP ruled in Maharashtra and at the Centre.

Mr. Prasad did not elaborate on why the BJP Governments did not take action and why the party was making the allegations now.

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