No case against Rajiv, hard to believe Sushma didn’t know: Chidambaram

In a statement, Chidambaram said Sushma was “either ignorant (which is difficult to believe) or deliberately uttering falsehoods”.

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Regarding Anderson’s case, Chidambaram said the BJP and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley did not tell Parliament the whole story. “We all know what happened to the attempts made to bring back Anderson. And we know about the note made by Mr Jaitley about Anderson’s being a weak case. Since he did not mention it in Parliament yesterday, we will leave it at that,” he said.

In a blow-by-blow rebuttal to the BJP’s charges in Parliament, Chidambaram said the reason the UPA had not sought extradition of Lalit Modi was it was a “legal trap”.

“Extradition proceedings could take 10 years, during which time Lalit Modi would have roamed free. We realised it was a trap. So we simply said Modi was wanted by investigating agencies in India; his Indian passport had been revoked and he did not have a valid visa, so please deport him,” he said. “Look at the Julian Assange case. His extradition proceedings have been on for four years now.”

Chidambaram challenged the government to make public his letter to UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, which was quoted extensively by Sushma in the Lok Sabha. “One day the letter will be public I am sure. The truth will be out.”

He said it was Pranab Mukherjee and not he who was finance minister when the case against Lalit Modi was made. Chidambaram said it was up to the Enforcement Directorate to decide what kind of lookout notice was to be issued against Modi at that time. “There is what is called predicate criminal offence after which a case against the Prevention of Money Laundering Act could be registered. These are sequential steps. In 2012, we were taking the first steps. How could we move to the second step when he was refusing to appear for investigation? In the past four-five years the ED must have gathered more evidence,” he said, adding he never knew Lalit Modi personally. “After all, he is not my family friend.”

Regarding the fate of GST, Chidambaram said the Congress was in favour of passing a GST that was right for the country. “The government must accept our three conditions on GST. After all, we were the ones who authored the GST. For six years the BJP obstructed it for no apparent reason,” he said.