BJP should not forget it has skeletons in its cupboard: Kapil Sibal

Stepping up his attack on the BJP over the telecom policy pursued by its government in 1999, telecom minister Kapil Sibal today said the opposition party should not forget that they have skeletons in their cupboard.

Referring to his charge that the country had lost Rs1.43 lakh crore during the NDA rule due to the changes it made in the telecom policy, Sibal said, "This is not to take revenge but to tell them that please look inwards before you start attacking institutions and destroying that very substratum of Parliamentary democracy".

Sibal had yesterday claimed that the government "actually" lost Rs1.43 lakh crore in revenue in 1999 because of the then BJP-led NDA regime shifting to revenue share system from fixed a licence fee for telecom operations.

Asked whether his charge would be investigated, he said, "They have a lot of skeletons in their cupboard which is why I mentioned it (loss of Rs1.43 lakh crore)".

He said he was only trying to highlight the issue of corruption which has become a "societal issue".

"Corruption is an issue in this country and it reflects in every layer of the society. The media is also not far away from it. The political class is not far away from it. The professional class is not far away from it. This is a societal issue which needs to be addressed holistically," he said.

BJP has dismissed Sibal's charges, saying the minister was "defending the indefensible" in the second-generation mobile telephony spectrum.

"It is a worst kind of cover up," BJP spokesperson Prakash Javdekar said reacting to Sibal's claim.