Dogging The | Fresh Allegations Against Bhushans, Sonia Distances From Smear Campaign « Dogging

Dogging The | Fresh Allegations Against Bhushans, Sonia Distances From Smear Campaign

April 29, 2011 – 11:00 pm

Calcutta News.Net
Wednesday 20th April, 2011 (IANS)

The controversies dogging the civil society representatives in the Lokpal Bill joint drafting committee continued to rage Wednesday with fresh allegations of graft surfacing against committee co-chair Shanti Bhushan. But Bhushan fought back, demanding a public apology from Congress leader Digvijaya Singh and dismissing as ‘malicious’ a report that he and his son Jayant had got land from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s discretionary quota.

The former law minister and his family have been in the proverbial eye of the storm since he was appointed to the 10-member committee to draft a more stringent Lokpal (ombudsman) Bill to fight corruption. His lawyer son Prashant is also member of the panel. On Wednesday, Shanti Bhushan’s other son Jayant also found himself in the headlines.

Meanwhile, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi said in a letter to Anna Hazare, whose five-day fast-unto-death resulted in the joint drafting committee being set up, that she doesn’t ‘support nor encourage the politics of smear campaign’ launched against civil rights activists who are part of the joint panel.

Hazare had written to Sonia complaining against party general secretary Digvijay Singh without mentioning his name.

L’affaire Bhushan also saw expelled Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Amar Singh as well as Digvijay Singh take on the family.

In another development, Shanti Bhushan served a legal notice on Digvijay Singh demanding a public apology for alleging that he had undervalued a property in Allahabad and not paid adequate stamp duty on it. But the Congress leader remained unmoved.

Reacting to a newspaper report that he and his son Jayant had taken two plots in Noida at below-market rates, Shanti Bhushan said: ‘To suggest that the allotment has been obtained from any discretionary quota is totally false and misleading.’

Giving procedural details of the allotment, Bhushan said: ‘So far, possession has not been delivered, nor the lease deal executed. It is only after the plot has been made approachable by construction of roads that possession would be delivered and lease executed.’

Bhushan said if there had been any arbitrariness, the allotments should be