After asking BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, to clear his stance on the hike in gas prices from April 1, Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal trained his guns on the Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi.
In a publicly released letter to the Congress vice-president on Monday, Kejriwal asked him if he supported the hike in gas prices to $8 from $4/unit that would reportedly bring benefits worth Rs 54,000 crore to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. “If not, will you ask your Government to nullify the decision?”, he said, adding that the hike would have a cascading effect on the prices of transport, power, fertiliser and food items.
On Sunday, Kejriwal kicked off his Lok Sabha election campaign from Haryana, terming Modi and Rahul Gandhi “two sides of the same (Ambani) coin”. He also asked Rahul Gandhi to clear the air about the kind of relations his party had with Ambani.
“Why are both Modi and you silent on the issues of gas pricing,” says the letter, asking why the UPA government decided to raise gas prices a few days before the elections and whether there was some quid pro quo with respect to election funds.
Kejriwal also wanted to know the amount of money being spent on Rahul Gandhi’s election campaign and what the source of the funds was. “Modi and you use private aircraft and copters for your campaign. Who owns these? According to newspaper reports some of these belong to Mukesh Ambani,” says the letter, adding that a public reply to the letter would “clear the air” in people’s minds about all these issues.
Kejriwal, whose 49-day Delhi government filed an FIR against Ambani, Oil Minister Veerappa Moily among others, also wanted to know if Congress would give a Lok Sabha ticket to Moily, and other leaders against whom there were alleged corruption charges, such as Kamal Nath, Salman Khursheed, P Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal.
>Kejriwal asks Modi to clear stance on gas pricing
>Power, fertiliser may cost more as Govt clears gas price hike