Lalu's acquittal in DA case bad in law: BJP

10 Mar, 2007
PATNA: Senior BJP leader and party's national spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad has dubbed special CBI judge Muni Lal Paswan's acquittal order in favour of RJD chief and railway minister Lalu Prasad in the DA case as one having scant regard of law.

"It (the order) is vulnerable to law," he said and added that the CBI should have challenged the verdict in a higher court. Speaking to mediapersons on Saturday, Prasad, a former Union law minister, claimed that the CBI wanted to go into appeal but the Union law ministry did not permit it to do so.

"The way the CBI is handling the cases against Lalu and Quattrocchi makes it amply clear that it is working under a political pressure,"

he alleged. Prasad recalled a Supreme Court order of March 1996 in which the apex court had directed the CBI to bring the case to its logical end. So far, no acquittal has been made in the fodder scam case either in Bihar or Jharkhand, he added. Earlier in the day, Prasad was given a rousing welcome at the party office here for the significant role he played as the party's in-charge in the Uttarakhand assembly elections. He said that the results of Punjab and Uttarakhand will have a strong effect on national politics.

Claiming that the Congress has been rapidly losing its grip on the electorate, he hoped that the BJP will make a repeat show of Uttarakhand in UP, which, he said, is not "Uttam" Pradesh but a "Barbad" Pradesh. Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi said that like Uttarakhand, a large contingent of partymen from Bihar will play a crucial role in UP elections as well. He said the constituencies along the UP-Bihar border will be taken care of by the Bihar unit of the BJP. State party president Radha Mohan Singh was also present on the occasion. The party also condemned the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray's anti-Bihari statement in Mumbai on Friday.

It said that Raj has become frustrated after his Sena's debacle in the recent civic body elections.