Chidambaram in New Delhi on Friday. (PTI)New Delhi, March 25: A WikiLeaks cable set off a din in Parliament on the budget session’s last day, with members objecting to a purported comment by home minister P. Chidambaram to US ambassador Timothy Roemer in 2009.
Chidambaram is alleged to have said that northern and eastern India were slowing the country’s growth, and that India would have made more progress if it had only its southern and western parts.
Members from the Samajwadi Party, BJP, Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal were up in arms.
Samajwadi chief Mulayam Singh Yadav raised the issue in the Lok Sabha, saying Chidambaram, despite being the home minister of the country, had made comments “against national unity”.
The more serious aspect was that Chidambaram had made the remarks to “a foreign ambassador”, Mulayam said as his party members chanted: “Where is the home minister?”
Samajwadi members rushed to the well and demanded Chidambaram’s removal. The House was adjourned amid ruckus.
A PTI report quoted Chidambaram as telling reporters outside Parliament: “Don’t dignify the cables... but if you want me to comment, I denounce the cables.”
The government would be relieved that the budget session has ended and it would no longer have to face attacks in Parliament over WikiLeaks reports.
The session was originally scheduled to go into recess on March 21 but it was extended till today as the second part of the session has been cancelled because of the upcoming elections in five states. All financial business has been completed.
The BJP, which spent most of the session trying to project the government as the most corrupt in Indian history, raised the issue of corruption again today.
L.K. Advani got up to demand that the Shunglu Committee report on the Commonwealth Games scandals be tabled in Parliament today. He argued that the scandals had left the people of the country worried.
Parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Bansal said the Shunglu Committee had been formed through an executive order and the government was not obliged to table the report. However, he said, necessary action would be taken after studying the report. The report has anyway been put on the committee’s website.
The leader of the Lok Sabha Opposition, Sushma Swaraj, accused the government of taking evasive action and merely mouthing promises about punishing the corrupt.
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