Virbhadra asks oppn to move court to prove charges against him

Shimla: Under attack from the opposition over alleged corruption, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on Saturday hit back at his detractors saying that they were unleashing a "slander" campaign against him, and asked them to move court to prove the charges.

Addressing a rally at Amb in Una district, Singh accused former Chief Minister PK Dhumal and his sons of "vitiating the political atmosphere and creating bitterness", and said that they had brought the political debate to the lowest ebb by continuing to level false charges against him.

"In a democratic polity, governments come and go, and allegations are levelled against political opponents during elections but for the first time the BJP continues to rely on the mud-slinging to malign me," Singh said, adding that he was only concerned about the people of the state and was not bothered about "what the BJP alleges".

Accusing Dhumal of crossing all limits, Singh said, "Senior BJP leader Shanta Kumar was Chief Minister for two terms, but never in the past the change in government caused such bitterness and the leaders maintained dignity."

Asserting that he harbours no animosity against anyone, he said that the BJP government, led by Dhumal, implicated him in false cases during its two terms but he got clean chit from the court, and added that Dhumal and his family is feeling the heat of the vigilance bureau for their "wrongdoings".

The Himachal Chief Minister has been in the eye of a storm after the BJP levelled corruption allegations against him that he favoured a power company with which he and his family has business ties.

Demanding a CBI probe into the "most open and shut case of corruption", leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, who has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, wanted to know what action he, the Congress President and Vice President would take against him (the Himachal CM).

Asked about the allegations, the Prime Minister had yesterday said he had not looked into the issue as he did not have the time for it, drawing sharp criticism from the BJP. 

Launching a scathing attack on the Himachal Pradesh Cricket association (HPCA), led by Dhumal's son Anurag Thakur, the Himachal Chief Minister said it was virtually indulging in land grabbing, and alleged that the erstwhile BJP government gave "Shamlat" land to the sports body for the construction of a hotel.

The BJP government, led by Dhumal, even showed that the land as "barren" with no tree, while 200 trees were still standing on the land. Further, a building of the Education department was declared unsafe and demolished and the land was given to the HPCA.

Referring to the phone-tapping case, Virbhadra said that the BJP regime was like "the regimes of Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in Russia" where individual freedom was infringed upon.

Virbhadra, who was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1962, said that he had worked with all the Prime Ministers from Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh, but never in his political career spanning over five decades he had seen politics taking such an ugly turn.