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It’s target Chidambaram again

When the Aircel-Maxis deal controversy is slowly fading out, the home minister P Chidambaram has successfully managed to hit the headlines yet again. On Thursday, the Madras high court refused to dismiss a petition that challenges his election to the Lok Sabha in 2009 from Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu.

However, Chidambaram has responded with characteristic poise. He looked unaffected by the strong criticism of the opposition and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the ruling party in Tamil Nadu.

The Madurai bench of the court declined Chidambaram's plea for dismissal of the election petition against him by the AIADMK candidate R S Raja Kannappan, who lost to Chidambaram. Kannappan had alleged that Chidambaram's election team had manipulated the votes in this election. Chidambaram won this seat by a delicate margin of 3,300 votes.

The Congress got into damage-control mode immediately. It came out in support of the home minister, while the Bharatiya Janata Party and the AIADMK slammed him, asking him to resign. Remaining calm, Chidambaram on Thursday said that the court's order was not a setback for him but in fact a 'setback for the petitioner whose main contention had been struck down'.

He also mentioned, 'I am astonished by the monumental ignorance displayed by certain political leaders. This is an election petition. There are 111 election petitions filed against members of 15th Lok Sabha.'

The law minister Salman Khurshid condemned the attack made by the BJP. He said, 'Every single day the BJP wakes up in the morning and asks Chidambaram to resign. Does that mean that the home minister gets a resignation printed, because they demand it on a daily basis or should he give it through the Internet?'

Khurshid added, 'This is not a criminal trial. This is in response to an election petition. This issue can be taken to a higher court like the Supreme Court. God knows how many times the home minister would have resigned had he accepted whatever the BJP said'.

The Congress spokesperson Rashid Alvi told Millennium Post, 'We have not gone through the court's order. First let us go through it then only will we take a call. About BJP attacking Chidambaram, I would say it is not important what people keep saying and we won't react till we read the court's order.'

The party general secretary Digvijay Singh also supported Chidambaram on the issue. He said, 'What case has he lost? It's an election petition. He has not lost a case, which has anything to do with his working as the home minister.'

The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa demanded Chidambaram's removal. She said that his continuation would be a 'blot on democracy'. She stressed that he should resign immediately and if he failed to do so, the prime minister should drop him from the cabinet.

While  the BJP president Nitin Gadkari hit out at Chidambaram saying, 'I appeal to the prime minister to remove him from cabinet. There are so many instances of corruption against him. He has no moral right to be on his post. He should have resigned much earlier.'

Gadkari added, 'Why is Sonia Gandhi protecting him? Why is the Congress tolerating his corruption? The country wants an explanation.'

The BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh told Millennium Post, 'This is a matter of propriety. Morally Chidambaram must step down, and the reason for it is that imagine if the court after the trial, gives a verdict saying that the election was rigged by him, then his status as a member of Parliament gets set aside. Also under the constitution, the oath he has taken will be null and void. Therefore, he will be guilty of constitutional impropriety. Because of this it is important that Mr Chidambaram should step down morally and uphold the constitutional propriety.'
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