NEW DELHI, Jan 18: Government is consulting legal experts whether it could make public the Bofors documents, including the names of the recipients of the kickback in the controversial Rs 1500 crore gun deal, Railway Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said here today.The government was not in a position to make the documents public in view of the conditions laid down by the Swiss court at the time of handing over of the papers to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), he said.
The Swiss court while handing over the papers had asked the government not to make them public failing which it would not give other documents, the Railway minister added.
To a specific question whether the Bofors issue had become an election issue, Paswan said people had forgotten about it. ``Now that Sonia Gandhi has raked it up, this has become an ``election issue'', Paswan said.
Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Atal Behari Vajpayee today said he had told Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral that the government should
not have any hesitation in making public the documents relating to the Bofors scandal now that Sonia Gandhi had herself dared it to publish the papers. Vajpayee said, he had twice spoken to the prime minister about the Bofors issue.
``In fact, I have suggested to the prime minister that he should immediately make public the CBI's report seeking the government's permission to chargesheet two former senior bureaucrats. The CBI's report contains many other names for prosecution, but government clearance is required only for these two names,'' the BJP leader said. According to Gujral, the beneficiaries of the Bofors scandal were trying to scuttle the investigations and the people who were being suspected of having a hand in it had `very long arms', Vajpayee said.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gujral today declined to comment on the suggestion made to him by Vajpayee. When approached by journalists at Rashtrapati Bhavan, Gujral made it clear that he was not making any statement on the issue.
In Hyderabad,
Gujral's United Front partner, Telugu Desam Party too joined such of those political parties demanding disclosure of Bofors papers.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
