Congress chief Sonia Gandhi forces Manmohan Singh's hand to dump his favourites, rail minister Pawan K Bansal and law minister Ashwani Kumar.
Railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and law minister Ashwani Kumar on Friday were forced to submit their resignations after high drama that saw Congress president Sonia Gandhi taking charge of affairs and asking prime minister Manmohan Singh to cleanse the government.
Both ministers reached the PM’s residence, 7 Race Course Road, separately in the evening and handed over their resignation letters.
Earlier in the day, Gandhi had arrived at the PM’s residence, prompting a flurry of activity. While she was still there, health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and her political advisor Ahmed Patel arrived.
Kumar is accused of making deletions in a CBI report on its coal block investigations meant for the Supreme Court. The court has severely reprimanded both the CBI and the government for Kumar’s actions.
Sources say Gandhi took matters in her hands after she was told that the CBI would question Bansal about his nephew meddling in rail appointments and about some actions of his personal secretary, an IAS officer.
The Congress high command, riding on the Karnataka election victory, where they made corruption a main issue against the BJP, now seems determined to cleanse the government and give the UPA a new face before its fourth anniversary on May 21.
Newly-appointed party spokesperson Bhakta Charan Das read out a written statement saying: “Congress has always looked at issues like corruption very seriously...”
At the AICC briefing earlier, Das emphasised: “Congress party’s policy is that the party and the leadership is not going to spare anybody who is mired in corruption.”
A week earlier on Saturday, Bansal had met the PM an hour before the Congress core group meeting and explained his position.
A day later, defence minister AK Antony was closeted with Gandhi at her residence on 10 Janpath, before she again called a core group meeting. But she remained indecisive as the prime minister and a majority of core group members were against the two ministers resigning.
Congress sources said president Sonia Gandhi was baying for Kumar’s blood to salvage her food security bill. But she gave up when the BJP kept demanding the PM’s resignation. And Singh too tried to convince her that Kumar had acted in the best interests of the party by vetting the CBI status report.
Gandhi apparently told the PM that enough damage had been done to the Congress and that action against the two should have been taken earlier. At her meeting with the PM on Friday, she wanted Bansal to resign immediately. But she left it to the prime minister to take a call on Kumar.
At Thursday’s cabinet meeting, while some ministers had turned in favour of Kumar and actually praised him for helping the government, the young lot wanted him to clear the perception building against the party.
Some even asked the prime minister to reshuffle the cabinet to get rid of the two ministers as they said the issue would come up only in the monsoon session of Parliament, which begins in late July, when the BJP rakes it up.
— With agency inputs
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