DDCA row: Congress demands Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's resignation

NEW DELHI: Congress MPs on Monday indulged in sloganeering against finance minister Arun Jaitley over the DDCA issue in both House of Parliament and demanded his resignation and a JPC probe. Jaitley, on his part, vehemently rejected the charges and asserted in the Lok Sabha that the Serious Fraud Investigation Office had given a clean chit to the DDCA project. In a unusual turn of events, BJP member Kirti Azad suggested in the House a timebound investigations by CBI or SIT into the DDCA issue.

The Congress strategy meeting on Monday morning finalised the decision to raise the DDCA issue in a big way. Sources said party V-P Rahul Gandhi had late Friday asked party MPs whether they thought the issue should be raised in the House and all of them responded by raising their hands. After one more round of discussion on Monday morning, party chief Sonia Gandhi okayed Congress’ action-plan in both the Houses.

Congress deputy whip in the Lok Sabha, KC Venugopal, alleged construction work at Feroz Shah Kotla had reached Rs 114 crore against the estimate of Rs 24 crore through "forced escalation". Referring to Azad’s claims at a press meet on Sunday, Venugopal said: "A laptop was hired for Rs 36,000 for a day, printer for Rs 3,000 and a ‘puja ki thali’ for Rs 5,000 for a day. He (Jaitley) is also involved in the scam. We demand a JPC probe and resignation of Jaitley."

Jaitley said DDCA raised money by offering boxes to corporate houses as the BCCI allocated just Rs 4 crore for building the Delhi stadium. "We constructed a stadium with capacity 50,000 in Rs 114 crore, whereas the Congress government renovated Jawahar Lal Nehru stadium for Rs 600 crore with capacity 14,000. The SFIO has gone through the expenditure at Kotla stadium and cleared us. I say the allegations against me are wrong, baseless," Jaitley said.

As Congress MPs persisted with their protest, Jaitley quipped: "Please sit down, you should have the courage to listen even if what I am saying may be very unpleasant for you. Why do you find my reply so inconvenient?"

Soon after Jaitley took his seat, Azad got up, cheered by Congress MPs and some BJP MPs urging him not to speak. He suggested to Congress MPs to demand a time-bound CBI or SIT probe. "The Modi government is against corruption. That is why CBI is probing DDCA activities between 2008 and 2013. Everybody knows who the president was during this time," he said. Then, pointing to the Congress benches, he said: "You should demand a time-bound probe by CBI or SIT."