New Delhi:
Just as the Winter Session of Parliament was about to begin, the Congress acted swiftly by sacking Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and Congress parliamentary party secretary Suresh Kalmadi.
Both Chavan and Kalmadi are scam-tainted - former in Adarsh Housing Society scam while the latter in the Commonwealth Games scam. The Congress' wanted to move the sting out of an angry Parliament debate.
But there's a next big target - telecom minister A Raja - who is accused of a telecom scam hitting tens of thousands of crores. The Opposition says Raja must go too.
"UPA has had too much corruption, but there has been too much corruption in the past two Sessions of Parliament. I want to raise the issue of corruption - the CWG scam, 2G spectrum scam and the Adarsh scam," said Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
"Don't become so sensitive on the issue and don't threaten to disrupt the proceedings of the House over this," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal said to the Opposition leaders.
Mr Bansal put up a brave face, but the government is extremely worried over the 2G scam.
The allegation is that the telecom ministry sold licenses for second generation spectrum for a mere Rs 1651 crore for a pan-India licence.
Some buyers sold stakes in their firms for three times the amount.
But now, sources say, the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) report puts the loss at nearly Rs 1.76 lakh crore - twice as earlier alleged.
The government is also worried that the CAG would not only embarrass the government but also drag in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) as Raja has said it was kept in the loop - a fact denied by PMO officials.
So will the government act against Raja?
Sources say the UPA can't remove Raja until the DMK leadership agrees, and right now Congress' southern ally is in no mood to oblige. So the Congress too took a cautious line.
"The matter is subjudice, it's an old issue," Congres spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said.
But the party president convened a high level strategy meet at her residence to take stock of the Congress' Parliamentary strategy.
Acting against Congress' own tainted men was easier than persuading its ally, the DMK, to drop its nominee A Raja who has become a source of constant embarrassment for the UPA government.