BJP has skeletons in its Telecom cupboard: Kapil Sibal

The leader has claimed BJP's policies in 1999 lost the country Rs 1.43 lakh crore.

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 it has skeletons in its cupboard.

Referring to his charge that the country had lost Rs 1.43 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 Rs 1.43 lakh crore in revenue in 1999 because of the then BJP-led NDA regime shifting to a revenue sharing system from fixed license fee for Telecom operations.

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Asked whether his charge would be investigated,he said,”They have a lot of skeletons in their cupboard which is why I mentioned it (the loss of Rs 1.43 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 2G spectrum scam. “It is the worst kind of cover-up,” BJP spokesman Prakash Javdekar said reacting to Sibal’s claim.

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