Congress MP Karti Chidambaram leaves the CBI headquarters after being questioned in an alleged scam pertaining to issue of visas for Chinese nationals, in New Delhi, on Friday

Congress MP Karti Chidambaram leaves the CBI headquarters after being questioned in an alleged scam pertaining to issue of visas for Chinese nationals, in New Delhi, on Friday | Photo Credit: PTI

M The Central Bureau of Investigation questioned Congress MP Karti Chidambaram for the second consecutive day on Friday in the probe relating to charges of cash-for-visas.

The Lok Sabha MP from Sivaganga Karti appeared before the CBI at its CGO complex headquarters in the morning. ”It’s their privilege to call me and it’s my duty to go,” he remarked when asked about the CBI questioning.

The CBI is grilling him on charges of facilitating project visas for Chinese nationals through his father P Chidambaram, the union home minister in 2011.

Karti has also been accused by the CBI of taking ₹50 lakh as bribe to arrange 264 project visas of Chinese nationals who were employed by a firm, Shandong Electric Power Construction Corporation, to build a power plant in Punjab. The proceeds of the crime Karti is alleged to have committed is separately being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

‘Breach of privilege’

Ahead of joining the CBI probe, the opposition parliamentarian tweeted that he has drawn Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla’s attention to what he described “gross breach” of his “parliamentary privilege”.

“...My parliamentary committee papers that pertain to IT Committee have been taken during search and seizure. No one has the right to take these confidential papers,” he stated in the communique to Birla.

In the letter he also claimed that over the course of the past few years, his family and he himself have become targets of a “relentless campaign by the present government and its investigating agencies which are trying to silence our voices of dissent by foisting one fake case after another”.

Published on May 27, 2022