Bihar CM Nitish blames Congress over boycott threat initiative

Patna, Nov. 23 (ANI): Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday blamed the country's ruling Congress Party for initiating the tradition of boycotting ministers.

"This is a tradition that has been started by the Congress Party," he told mediapersons here.

Kumar's statement came in the wake of a parliamentary boycott called by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Union Minister P. Chidambaram over the latter's alleged involvement in the 2G spectrum scam.

Chidambaram has been at the centre of an extensive political storm ever since certain reports revealed of his alleged role in "deciding" the prices of 2G-spectrum during his earlier tenure as the Finance Minister, thus embroiling him in the telecom scam.

His name cropped up in a recent letter of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee addressed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in which Mukherjee blamed his predecessor for not sticking to the established procedures in auctioning of the 2-G spectrum.

The letter stated that sufficient steps were not taken by Chidambaram to prevent the colossal scam from occurring in the first place, considering he could have "stuck to the stand" of auctioning of the precious spectrum instead of giving it at throwaway prices.

The telecom scam, one of India's biggest graft cases ever, may have cost 39.57 billion dollars in revenue to the public exchequer as per the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).

A. Raja was sacked in November last year and later arrested after being charged with giving away telecom licences in 2008 for a pittance, at meagre prices of 2001 in the CAG report. Raja is presently facing trial along with a group of telecom executives and DMK lawmaker Kanimozhi.

Kumar also welcomed the unity of the opposition against the issue of inflation.

"Inflation has spiralled out of control. In Parliament, all the opposition parties have decided to raise the issue. The most important thing is that the opposition has established coordination, be it for any group in the opposition," said Kumar.

"If there is coordination amongst all of them, then only will they be able to tighten and force the government to follow the right direction and be successful," he added.

Both Houses of Parliament were adjourned till Thursday, as the opposition refused to back down on the issue of price rise and other issues.

Food inflation has been stubbornly high over the last few years in India, in spite of record foodgrain production and robust buffer stocks.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already raised rates 13 times since early March 2010 to clamp down on stubborn inflation, largely driven by high food prices.

Inflation has remained over nine percent since December 2010. The headline inflation measured on Wholesale Price Index (WPI) was 9.7 percent in October, while the rate of price in food segment for the week ended November 05 was 10.6 percent. (ANI)