The Indian government’s senior legal adviser yesterday defended Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Supreme Court against allegations he had failed to act over a massive telecoms corruption scam.
Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati said Singh “had made all efforts to deal with the complaint” after the court asked the prime minister to explain delays in replying to an opposition request to prosecute the minister involved.
India’s chief auditing body last week declared that the sale of 2G telecoms licenses by former Indian telecoms minister A. Raja had lost the country up to US$40 billion.
Raja, who resigned on Nov. 14, is accused of selling the licenses in 2007 to favored bidders for a fraction of their true value.
Singh has not been accused of benefiting from any alleged graft but, under Indian law, the prime minister must approve criminal proceedings against any Cabinet member.
Vahanvati told the court that the complaint lodged by opposition MP Subramanian Swamy was “misconceived in law.”
Swamy wrote to Singh in 2008 demanding for Raja to be investigated and prosecuted, but he said he received a reply only in March this year saying no probe would be launched.
India’s main opposition party yesterday vowed to keep parliament deadlocked until the government agreed to a cross-party probe into the allegations.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other opposition groups have forced constant adjournments in parliament for two weeks as Singh has come under increasing pressure over his handling of the scandal.
“Two-thirds of the house members are demanding a joint parliamentary committee probe. Why is the government denying their demand? It is a democratic demand,” BJP spokesman Prakash Javdekar said. “The prime minister should resign if he believes in democracy.”
The controversy has presented Singh with one of the most serious challenges to his reputation for probity since he came in power in 2005.
He has denied failing to act and on Saturday said “there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that if any wrong thing has been done by anybody, he or she or will be brought to book.”
Raja hails from a powerful southern regional party that is a pivotal member of the coalition government headed by Singh’s Congress party.
Congress officials have been accused of being unwilling to risk the coalition by upsetting Raja’s DMK party over the disputed telecoms sell-off.
The Supreme Court on Monday expressed its concern that media coverage of the scandal had implicated Singh directly.
“The prime minister’s role is being dragged [in] unnecessarily,” the judges said.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS