The minister was speaking at the book release of former CBI director Joginder Singh's Inside CBI.

Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) N. Vittal suggested to make it mandatory for all the Members of Parliament to submit their annual property returns to the Speaker of Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha chairman.

``There had been instances when Parliament dealt with corruption severely and carried out investigations to its logical end,'' said the Defence Minister, adding that to remove corruption from high places one should begin with Parliament. ``There is an ethics committee in the Rajya Sabha but is also required in the Lok Sabha.'' Describing the Joint Parliamentary Committee, set up to investigate into the Bofors scams as ``inactive'', Fernandes said that the Parliament has been reduced to a non-functional body. Stating the annual conviction rate was as low as 6.2 per cent as opposed to the CBI claim of 60 to 70 per cent, Vittal said that investigations into various scandals alone would not serve any purpose unless these were taken to their logical end. He stressed ``zero per cent tolerance'' against corruption and that the CBI had to be made a more effective organisation for handling corruption charges.

Earlier, Joginder Singh spoke about the invisible pressures that had mounted on him when he was the CBI director. He defined his book as the news behind the scenes during his tenure of 12 months which has not been reported. The book accuses the then prime minister I.K. Gujral of trying to block Laloo Prasad Yadav's arrest. The book says that the PMO office had sent him directions on June 18, 1997, to issue a fax to the Patna office for not arresting Laloo Prasad Yadav.

On the fodder scam, the book says that during the investigation many suppliers had admitted that they had never actually supplied material to the Animal Husbandary Department (AHD). According to the book, the principal accused had floated 67 companies in different names for laundering black money. The book states that the fraudulent withdrawals in AHD could not be detected due to the intervention of Laloo Prasad Yadav and Congress leader Jagnnath Mishra.