BJP cries for minister head

New Delhi, May 4: The BJP alleged that railway minister Pawan Bansal was not just “morally culpable but criminally liable” for his nephew’s alleged acceptance of a huge bribe and demanded he should be immediately dropped from the Union cabinet. Rajya Sabha Opposition leader Arun Jaitley told a news channel that although money may have changed hands at the level of a relative and his associates for a high-level railway board appointment, the appointment itself would have to be ratified by Bansal and, therefore, the buck stopped at his door. Dubbing the UPA a “cash-and-carry government” that had “lost all sense of dignity and shame”, Jaitley said: “It is an open-and-shut case and the resignation of the minister should come in the very first instance. The CBI will shed light on whose behalf the money was taken. But the brazen defiance by the UPA government will alienate it from the people.” At war with the government in Parliament, the BJP was determined to stall proceedings yet again if Bansal continued in office. Jaitley’s deputy leader in the Upper House, Ravi Shankar Prasad, alleged that the Congress had reduced its government to a “shop” in which “decisions were sold for a price to those who came with huge capital”. “This is happening because in the coal block allocation scam, the PM’s role is shrouded in corruption charges. His consent as well as that of Sonia Gandhi is available to all the ministers. That’s why their ministers are setting new benchmarks of corruption,” he said. Prasad said while he had heard of irregularities in lower-level railway appointments, he had never known of posts being second in importance to that of the minister carrying a price tag running into crores of rupees.