New Delhi: Opposition parties have claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hawala remark is a signal for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to step down from the post for his alleged involvement in the DDCA scam.
Senior Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, yesterday said that by drawing a parallel with LK Advani in the Hawala case, the Prime Minister has given ample hint to Jaitley that he should resign and get himself cleared to make a come back.
"Today I heard Prime Minister saying that Jaitley will come out of this like L K Advani in the Jain Hawala case. I will remind Jaitley that Advani had then resigned and had not come back till he got clean chit from the Supreme Court," he said.
"So the Prime Minister seems to be telling Jaitley that he should not continue as Finance Minister till he gets cleared," another party leader, Anand Sharma, said.
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Advani had resigned as MP after the hawala charges were levelled against him and had vowed not to contest elections till he was cleared. He sat out the 1996 Lok Sabha election.
Striking a similar note, CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said, "I read it as a signal to Jaitley that you also do the same thing."
In a strong show of support for Jaitley, Modi yesterday said at BJP Parliamentary Party meet that he will come through "with flying colours" against charges of corruption levelled against him by the opposition in a same way Advani did in the Hawala case.
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh also tweeted, "Modi: 'I am sure Arun Jaitley would come out clean as Advaniji did in Hawala case'. But would Jaitley resign as Advaniji did ? No question!"
The ruling BJP was quick to dismiss such claims with its party's national secretary Shrikant Sharma saying that 'there is no parallel between charges against Advani and Jaitley'.
"CBI had registered a case, launched a criminal investigation and Advani quit as an MP on moral grounds. There is no criminal probe against Jaitley. These are allegations levelled by opposition which are unsupported by evidence," he said.
The BJP leader also noted that the SFIO probe was launched on the complaint of party MP Kirti Azad, who has targeted Jaitley over the issue after AAP and Congress raked it up.
"In fact, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office probe was carried out into these allegations when Congress was in power. It stated that there was no fraud or cheating. Due to political rivalry, Congress is ignoring its government's inquiry. It has no moral right to level such a charge," he said.
On Sunday, Azad had alleged massive corruption in the DDCA and vowed to pursue the case till its final conclusion. He had said that the DDCA, headed by Jaitley for 13 years till 2013, gave out contracts to fake companies, paying them crores of rupees in cash, and had fudged the audit of accounts.
