Congress attack over sugar still on

NEW DELHI, SEPT 24: Confident of having put Prime Minister A B Vajpayee on the defensive, the Congress today continued its attack on the ...

NEW DELHI, SEPT 24: Confident of having put Prime Minister A B Vajpayee on the defensive, the Congress today continued its attack on the BJP over the alleged scam in the import of sugar from Pakistan.

Party spokesperson Kapil Sibal charged Vajpayee with lying to the nation over the sugar import and challenged him to admit the truth and institute an inquiry into the deal.

Quoting figures released by the Foreign Trade Statistics of India of the Union Commerce Ministry, Sibal said the Prime Minister was responsible for the import of 1,18,743 tonnes of sugar worth Rs 160 crore in foreign exchange during the first three months after his government was installed. During the 10-month period between April 1998 and January 1999 sugar worth Rs 642 was imported.

8220;Vajpayee should tell the nation why he was buying sugar from Nawaz Sharif with such dedicated and single-minded frenzy,8221; he said.

The figures compiled by the Directorate-General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics also revealed that during thethree month from April to June this year, the government imported 56,295 tonnes of sugar worth Rs 54.32 crore.

8220;The official figures of import clearly proved that the Prime Minister8217;s claim of not importing a grain of sugar during the Kargil conflict was a lie,8221; Sibal said.

Sibal also charged that Food Minister S S Barnala had proposed a 40 per cent import duty on sugar but this was systematically ignored along with another notification amending the sugar control order to regulate release of imported sugar. Referring to the claim of the government that the total foreign exchange reserves rose from 23.98 billion in June 1998 to 30.56 billion in June this year, he said the major quantum of this addition had not come as earning but by non-productive means such as floating of Resurgent India Bonds.