Pune, Sep 16: Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde has made yet another gaffe. On Saturday, he said in Pune that the people of India would eventually forget the coal scam with the passage of time as they did with Bofors issue years ago.
Shinde was speaking at a function here. Though his tone was sarcastic, the timing of his remark could raise the heckles of the opposition.
“Earlier the Bofors scam was the hot debate all over the country. Later people forgot it. Now it is coal. This too will be forgotten. Once the hands are washed off coal, even they again become clean,” said Shinde.
Sounding too casual in approach, Shinde's remark came at a time when the UPA government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is facing wrath from the entire political fraternity over the coal scam.
The Bofors scam in 1989 led to the fall of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's government at the elections.
However, a court cleared Rajiv Gandhi's name in 2004, 13 years after his death, but the scandal continued to plague the party in later years.
