Congress leaders may find themselves at the receiving end after the party’s drive targeting senior BJP leaders. Highly-provocative newspaper advertisements inserted by Chhattisgarh CM Ajit Jogi against BJP leaders, including Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, have only added fuel to the fire.BJP parliamentary party spokesman V.K. Malhotra said today that a section of the party has asked the leadership to expedite CBI cases against Congress leaders and take action where inquiries have been completed. The demand cropped up at a meeting of the BJP parliamentary party this morning.Though Malhotra refused to name MPs who made the demand, sources disclosed that it was Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Vijay Goel, who demanded the party ‘‘reply to the Congress leaders in their own language’’. ‘‘Expedite CBI cases against them as this is the only language which they understand,’’ he is reported to have said.Though sources did not mention specific cases which could be pursued, they hinted at cases involving Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, her aide Vincent George, former Union Minister Shiela Kaul and Ajit Jogi. Malhotra termed the Ayodhya cases against Deputy PM L.K. Advani and HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi as ‘‘politically motivated’’ and sought their withdrawal. ‘‘No person was caught red-handed,’’ he told reporters.BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu, however, told the parliamentary party that since the BJP was a party with a difference, these cases need not be withdrawn though the Congress had withdrawn the cases filed against Indira Gandhi in 1980 on the basis of the Shah Commission report.
