Cong to give privilege motions against Swamy, Parrikar in RS

Going on the counteroffensive, the Congress will be giving privilege motions against Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in Rajya Sabha on Friday accusing them of "lying blatantly" during the AgustaWestland debate.

The All India Congress Committee also announced that the party will file defamation case against a US-based website, www.pguru.com, whose material was used by Swamy in Rajya Sabha debate. It alleged that the website is linked to the Sangh Parivar.

Friday is the last day of the Upper House during the current session.

Congress spokesman Jairam Ramesh told reporters that both Swamy and Parrikar have "blatantly lied" in Parliament by creating a "web of deceit" in front of the people.

Noting that the defence minister authenticated documents in Lok Sabha, he claimed it was not the judgement of the Italian court.

Insisting that the Italian judgement has nothing, he claimed there is "no accusation against the Congress leadership" in the verdict.

"It is a lie that the Italian judgement has indicted the Congress leadership.

"Swamy has made baseless allegations. He said he was reading from the Italian judgement," Ramesh said, adding the BJP leader authenticated a 13-page document in Rajya Sabha, which consists of two pages of an email from "Swamy to Swamy", a news report and nine pages from the website.

"Swamy has spoken big lies in Rajya Sabha on May 4 and has used false documents. We will not allow him to go scot free. The duo of Swamy and Parrikar have attempted to mislead the nation, for which they will have to pay the price," said Ramesh.

Claiming that the nine pages from the website are "false", he said the party would be filing a defamation case against it.

He claimed that besides Swamy, S Gurumurthy and IIM professor R Vaidyanathan are linked to the website being run by a person named Shri Aiyar from the Silicon valley.

Ramesh also claimed that Swamy wanted Vaidyanathan be made the next Reserve Bank of India governor in place of Raghuram Rajan.