Shankar Rao pins Advani for charges against Sonia

Minister for SSI and Weavers’ Welfare on Saturday chose to blame senior BJP leader LK Advani for the allegations made against Aicc President Sonia Gandhi and her late husband Rajiv Gandhi that they had illegal accounts in Swiss Banks, despite being pointed out that the charges were made by a party Task Force.

Speaking to media persons at the state Secretariat, Dr Shankar Rao took exception to the charges and blamed Mr Advani for the unsubstantiated allegations levelled against Congress chairperson.

The Minister’s reaction came at a time when a sense of unease arose among a section of the BJP as it turned the heat on the Congress and the Central government over a series of scams that rocked the nation. Following Ms Gandhi’s letter to Mr Advani, he expressed deep regrets to the former, over the ‘charges.’

But Dr Shankar Rao went on undaunted and said that, “It was wrong for Mr Advani to utter baseless allegations against a person who had sacrificed for the nation.”

Referring to the comments by Kadapa rebel leader and former MP YS Jaganmohan Reddy who called the Rs 1000 crore sanctioned towards fee reimbursement as ‘throw of alms’, the Minister categorically condemned it saying the former lacked a balance of judgement.

He said that, “For Mr Jaganmohan Reddy, who made crores as his income, the value of the remittance for the students was not incomprehensible.”

Irked by Mr Jaganmohan Reddy’s stand on the fee release, the Minister demanded that he tender unconditional apology for his utterance.

Stating that Mr Jaganmohan Reddy was surrounded by a group of sycophants, Dr Shankar Rao pointed out that the former was being misled by his men. The Minister blamed the Kadapa leader’s advisors and said that they had provided Mr Jaganmohan Reddy with a ‘wrong script’.

He suggested that the rebel leader should emulate his worthy father who had devised the reimbursement scheme with an intention to better the prospects of the poor students’ academic careers.