Brinda Karat lashes out at Central government over JPC issue

Siliguri, Dec 30 (ANI): Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat has slammed the central government for not presenting a reasonable argument against constituting a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) over graft charges in the multi-million dollar 2G spectrum allocation scam.

"It's very unfortunate that the Government should have made this a prestige issue because they have not been able to give any logic or any reasonable argument why they are against the JPC," said Karat on the sidelines of a rally here on Wednesday.

Targeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his offer to appear before the Public Accounts Committee, Karat dismissed this move as a political tactic to divert attention from JPC.

"Why does the Prime Minister reduce everything to himself? Whether he goes before the PAC, whether he goes before the JPC. As far as the PAC is concerned they are going to decide whom they want to call, whom they don't want to call. There is no need to make an offer unless you are doing it only for a very specific political reason," she said.

She also criticised the Central government's policies saying that wrong policies were responsible for the inflationary situation in the country.

"Yes, it is a fact that there was loss in production but at the same time what are your export and import policies. You encouraged exports; you gave subsidies to export of onions right till November. You reduced the minimum export price of onions in November. You wanted to finish all the old stocks. When you knew that in November itself the prices of onions were going up. Same thing with tomatoes, they are allowing the huge exports of tomatoes. It is the polices which are responsible," said Brinda Karat.

Further criticizing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the issue of corruption, Brinda Karat said: " BJP maintains double standards on the issue as it is defending a tainted state chief."

"The attitude of the BJP itself is very questionable because why are they still protecting the Chief Minister of Karnataka who is very closely involved in public knowledge of the huge land scam. So therefore double standards cannot convince anybody," she added. (ANI)