NEW DELHI, May 14: There was a rare show of unanimity between leaders, cutting across party lines, in the Lok Sabha who would, in other times, be at loggerheads with each other. But they were all agreed on one issue: the impropriety of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director Joginder Singh in leaking information about the chargesheet in the Rs 64 crore Bofors pay-off case to the media.

Priya Ranjan Das Munshi of the Congress was supported by Jaswant Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sharad Yadav, working president of the Janata Dal, and Somnath Chatterjee of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). And all of them argued that the Parliament should be informed about the latest stage of investigation, and that the CBI should not rush to the Press.

``Is CBI director Joginder Singh above Parliament?'' asked Das Munshi while making a statement on the notice for a Privilege Motion against Joginder Singh. It was taken up immediately after the Question Hour, and the Zero Hour was delayed by an hour.

Munshi was referring to the report published in the The Indian Express which revealed that the late Rajiv Gandhi was one of the accused in the chargesheet that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the CBI had prepared in the the Bofors case.

The Congress member argued that the CBI director was leaking information to the media when the Government ought to have taken the Parliament into confidence, and this amounted to a breach of parliamentary privilege. He also expressed admiration for the Indian Express Geneva correspondent Chitra Subramaniam. He said that the media had every right to publish reports and even guard their sources. But it was the CBI which was at fault.

In contrast, the information in the The Indian Express report about Revenasiddaiah's work on matching photographs to prove the linkage between the Italian businessman Quattrocchi and his wife Maria with Rajiv Gandhi amounted to witch-hunting. He said that a leader could be photographed with hundreds of people, who might be implicated in criminal cases later on, but that did not prove anything.

Jaswant Singh pointed out that it was the pressure built up in the Parliament which kept the Bofors issue alive, and therefore it was the duty of the Government to inform the House. The unexpected intervention was that of Sharad Yadav, who declared that the activism of the CBI had reduced the office of the Prime Minister to that of a ceremonial head like that of the President of India. He warned the Government that it should not allow the CBI to call the shots, and that it should reassert its authority.

He sympathised with the anguish felt by Das Munshi for dragging the name of the late Rajiv Gandhi into the case. He said that the CBI could not frame charges against a dead man because it had no way of reaching out to the after-life abode of heaven or hell.

Somnath Chatterjee in a brief statement supported Singh's view that the Parliament had a right to know about the probe.

JD MPs memo

A 16-member delegation of Janata Dal MPs on Wednesday met President Shanker Dayal Sharma and complained that the CBI was being used to settle political scores. In a memorandum presented to Sharma, they alleged that Harish Khandelwal, one of the accused in the Rs 950 crore fodder scam in Bihar was tortured by the investigating agency forcing him to commit suicide.

Demanding that the CBI should probe the fodder scam in a free and fair manner, they pleaded with the president to direct the CBI chief to submit a report relating to Khandelwal's suicide.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.