JOIN USAlleging that the UPA government was misusing top government agencies like the CBI and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to settle scores with political opponents, the BJP on Sunday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to deal with investigation into the Ishrat Jahan case “apolitically and objectively.”
BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said there are reports of trust deficit between the IB and the CBI over the Ishrat Jahan case.
“This issue has now reached the doorstep of the prime minister. We ask him to look at the issue apolitically and objectively so that the IB and the CBI work in national interest rather than for political mileage,” Sitharaman told reporters here.
Jahan, an alleged LeT operative, was killed in an encounter in 2004.
Policemen involved in the encounter are said to have acted on the basis of an intelligence input from the IB.
She also alleged that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry appeared to be engaged in controlling and censoring the press and urged the government to clarify whether it was trying to muzzle the media.
Sitharaman said some reports on the encounter were put on the websites of leading magazines, but removed “in no time.”
“Is the Information and Broadcasting Ministry involved in this in some way? Are the media organisations being suppressed by the ministry? If the IB and the CBI and now the media are being controlled, then we wonder if we are going back to the Emergency days,” Sitharaman said.
Reacting to the Congress attack on the Gujarat government over an illegal mining case, the BJP said the Congress should know that its former MP has also been convicted in the case. “The BJP wishes to state regarding the court order in Gujarat on the conviction of minister Babubhai Bokhiria in a case of illegal mining that he has been given bail. He shall use his discretion to go or not go in appeal to a higher court in the next seven days,” Sitharaman said.
“Our friends in the Congress want to readily comment on the issue. I would like to say that they should stop before jumping to any conclusion. In the same matter, former Congress MP Bharatbhai Odedara has also been convicted.”
Bokhiria, who is the water resources minister in the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat, has been found guilty by a Porbandar court in a case of illegal mining of limestone.