After rallying behind External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj over Lalit Modi travel papers controversy, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday finally came out in defence of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.
Conceding that Raje had close ties with former Indian Premier League (IPL) commissioner Lalit Modi, the BJP said that the party as well as the Rajasthan Chief Minister had cleared their stand on the issue.
Addressing a press conference in the national capital, BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi claimed that the authenticity of documents produced against the Rajasthan leader was not verified, adding that there was "no corruption and no impropriety" on the part of both Raje as well as Swaraj.
Ruling out the demand of the Congress party for resignation of the two senior BJP leaders, Trivedi said that the demand of the opposition party was "baseless" and without any "substantive documents".
The BJP spokesperson also used the opportunity to hit back at the Congress, asking "under whose government did IPL corruption take place?"
When asked about the issue of Sushma Swaraj, the BJP spokesperson said, "When the party president, and even the Home Minister and the Finance Minister have spoken about the issue in detail, there is no scope of anything else to be said in that matter."
Notably, Raje had earlier on Friday cancelled her scheduled trip to Anandpur Sahib in Punjab where she was slated to meet BJP president Amit Shah and Home Minister Rajnath Singh. It had sparked speculations that the Rajasthan leader was probably being snubbed by the BJP over Lalit Modi controversy.
This was for the first time that the central BJP leadership came all out in support of Raje, who is in the dock over her alleged ties with the controversial former IPL commissioner.
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