Senior BJP leader LK Advani gives Sushma Swaraj a pat on the back after her fiery defence in Parliament on the Lalit Modi controversy
Straining to be heard above a ceaseless chorus of slogans, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj delivered a strident attack on the opposition Congress as she declared "I committed no mistake" in reference to her assistance that allowed tainted cricket tycoon Lalit Modi to get urgent travel papers last year.
Till today, the Congress had insisted that it would not stop disrupting parliament till Ms Swaraj is removed over "Lalitgate", along with Chief Ministers Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who it has separately accused of corruption.
In her speech, delivered despite a stream of chants from the Congress, Mrs Swaraj said the party's top two leaders - Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul - can ill afford to accuse anyone else of abetting or shielding corruption. As evidence, she cited the infamous Bofors scandal of the 1980s, which saw Mrs Gandhi's husband and then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi fighting allegations of kickbacks from the Swedish defence manufacturer. The minister also referred to Warren Anderson, the head of Union Carbide, being allowed to Bhopal in 1984 days after a poisonous leak from the factory left thousands dead.
Rahul Gandhi, the Vice President of the Congress, said the minister must explain why it was the media, and not she, who disclosed that last year, she told UK officials last year that India had no objection to Lalit Modi being allowed to accompany his wife to Portugal. Mr Gandhi also said the minister must reveal how much money Lalit Modi had paid her family, a reference to the fact that Mrs Swaraj's daughter and husband have served as lawyers for the billionaire, who fled India in 2010.
"I did nothing clandestine," the minister declared.. "Not a single penny was paid to my daughter for this case," she said, referring to the disgraced tycoon's successful fight to have his Indian passport reinstated last year.
When Finance Minister Arun Jaitley declared that Mrs Swaraj would not resign, delivering the government's official reply, the Congress walked out in protest.