Congress-BJP at Loggerheads Over Lalit Modi Row

Cong targeted the Centre by raising the Lalit Modi row again, BJP dismissed it as a diversionary tactic.

Congress and BJP are at loggerheads over the Lalit Modi (centre) row, blaming each other for protecting the former IPL chief. (File photo: Reuters)

Congress today hit back at the BJP over the Lalit Modi controversy accusing the NDA government of “painstakingly attempting to bury the scandal”.

A day after the BJP raked up the National Herald case, the AICC released two letters on the Lalit Modi matter written in 2013, one by then-Finance Minister P Chidambaram and the then UK Chancellor of the Exchequer to bolster its case that deportation of the former IPL chief was the “appropriate expeditious remedy” for trying a fugitive like him.

With Congress targeting the Centre by raising the Lalit Modi issue again, BJP today dismissed it as a “diversionary tactic” deployed by the Opposition party to run away from inconvenient questions involving ‘Young Indian’, a company in which Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are “majority” stakeholders.

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said Congress was latching onto an “old and stale” issue and BJP leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj had exposed it in Parliament with their replies in the Monsoon session.

He said it was the then-UPA government that did not do enough to bring the former IPL chief to book.