Justice Santosh Hegde on Tuesday disassociated himself from the corruption charges levelled by Team Anna against 15 Union Ministers including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
“I am unaware of the proof Team Anna has against the union ministers including the Prime Minister. I don’t know the basis on which the charges were made”, Hegde, a prominent Team Anna member said talking to a private TV channel.
Team Anna last week clubbed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee with 13 other Cabinet Ministers, whom they accused of corruption.
The anti-graft group has picked up portions of a draft CAG report to make charges against Prime Minister.
Besides Singh and Mukherjee, the ministers against whom the Team Anna has demanded probe by an independent Special Investigation Team include P Chidambaram, Sharad Pawar, S M Krishna, Kamal Nath, S M Krishna, Praful Patel, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Virbhadra Singh, Kapil Sibal, Salman Khurshid, G K Vasan, Farooq Abdullah, M Alagiri and Sushil Kumar Shinde.
Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan, yesterday, hit out at PM saying, “Congress using the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a Shikhandi to hide corrupt dealings”.
The former Karnataka Lokayukta said that the comments against PM was completely unwarranted.
Gandhina Anna Hazare, however, had said that the Prime Minister is an “honest man” though some ministers in his cabinet are “corrupt”.
The opposition BJP also had asked Team Anna to exercise restrain over its language while criticising the Prime Minister.
“Any use of improper words against the Prime Minister is not acceptable. Members of Team Anna will have to exercise control over their language,” BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy had said.
—–Agencies