LK Advani's letter to Sonia Gandhi was not all apology: Nitin Gadkari

BJP president Nitin Gadkari denied on Thursday that veteran LK Advani apologised to Congress president Sonia Gandhi over a party task force report claiming she and her husband, former prime minister the late Rajiv Gandhi, had parked black money in Swiss banks.

Trying to skirt the issue that had put BJP on the back foot, he said, “It was not an apology.”

Gadkari, however, agreed Advani had written a letter to Sonia in which he regretted if the allegation hurt her. “The apology was mentioned at the end of the letter, in passing. But the manner in which the media highlighted it looked as if the letter was written to seek apology from the Congress president,” he said.

Gadkari held a freewheeling talk with the media on a wide range of issues, which included developmental works undertaken by BJP-ruled states and the high index of corruption in states where there is a Congress government.

Ruling out the possibility of mid-term polls following the exposure of a series of scams in the UPA government, he said, “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cannot get away by saying he is not responsible for all the wrongs.”

Gadkari came out strongly in defence of Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa who is facing charges of corruption. He said: “Similar cases of land de-notification were cleared by his predecessors. They were never asked to resign. Why should he [Yeddyurappa] be made a scapegoat?”

Differentiating the Karnataka scam from Adarsh in Mumbai, he said: “In case of Adarsh in Maharashtra, there were documents to establish the role of former chief minister [Ashok Chavan].”