Govt leaked Liberhan report to divide a united opposition: BJP

Claiming that the UPA government did not intend to table the full report as it indicts the then Congress government of P V Narasimha Rao, Deputy Leader of BJP in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said the Home Ministry leaked the report to divert attention from the issues being raised by a united opposition.

"This is a planned leak. It is a motivated leak. The first motivation for leaking the report is the unity in opposition on the sugarcane price issue which the government wanted to break. This unity would have continued on price rise and other issues," Swaraj said.

The senior BJP leader further alleged that the government wanted to divert attention from the opposition its plan of raising Madhu Koda and 2G Spectrum allocation scams in Parliament. "Thirdly, the government wanted to influence the Jharkhand elections where the first phase of polling will be held on November 25," she said.

Swaraj argued that since there were just two copies of the report -- one with Justice M S Liberhan and the other with the Home Ministry "under lock and key" -- if the government did not come clear on how the report was leaked, BJP would directly allege that the report was leaked by the Home Ministry.

Swaraj said Home Minister P Chidambaram cannot evade government's responsibility by merely saying that leakage of the report was "unfortunate" as the incident showed contempt of Parliament.

In reply to a question on whether her party would agree to tabling of only the English version of Liberhan report, Swaraj said she would accept if the government gave an assurance that the Hindi version would be tabled soon.

Sources said the English version and the Action Taken Report of Liberhan Commission document were with the government while the Hindi translation was yet to be done. Swaraj said BJP would not have demanded tabling of the report before the stipulated time had the leakage not taken place.

When asked about the opposition strategy tomorrow in Parliament, Swaraj said it would be decided in the Parliamentary Party meeting to be held in the morning. "We are contemplating moving a Privilege Motion against the Home Minister on the issue," Swaraj said.

BJP said it was also "shocked and surprised" at the mention of its veteran leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the report. However, Swaraj said a detailed reply on BJP's stand on the report and the demolition issue would be given only when the full report was tabled.