The Hindu : National : Bardhan backs Pratibha

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Sunday, Jul 01, 2007
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Bardhan backs Pratibha

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Defending the United Progressive Alliance-Left Presidential candidate Pratibha Patil, A.B. Bardhan, general secretary of the Communist Party of India, sought to question the timing of the charges being levelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

“No such charges were levelled when she was an MLA, a Minister, when she was Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, when she was Governor of Rajasthan,” the CPI leader said in a television programme ‘Devil’s Advocate’ on CNN-IBN, a release from the producers said. He described Ms. Patil as a “simple woman” who faces “lies manufactured by the BJP’s dirty tricks factory.”

Mr. Bardhan said Ms. Patil would eventually come forward and defend herself after the nomination stage of the election and rejected suggestions that she should withdraw, saying “let somebody else withdraw who stands as an independent candidate.”

The CPI leader denied the charges of a bank lending money to close relatives of Ms. Patil as either corruption or nepotism and said that in fact, some of them had paid back. To the specific charge that her brother Dilipsingh Patil had used the Bank’s telephone at his residence for his personal work and run up a bill of Rs. 20 lakh, a matter that the Liquidator-appointed Chief Administrator of the Bank has inquired into, Mr. Bardhan said one would have to prove that Ms. Patil was involved. To her views on forcible sterilisation, which she had expressed as the Health Minister in Maharashtra, the CPI leader said he was not called upon to support her views and beliefs.

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