Digvijay takes dig at CAG Rai, asks him to stop leaks

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh took a dig at Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai on Thursday asking why does he not stop leak of reports from his office, a day after the latter deprecated the "brazenness" with which the decisions were being taken by the government.

"The CAG keeps us giving knowledge (Gyan). We thank him very much for this. But why does he not put a check on leak of reports from his office," Singh told reporters in New Delhi responding to a question on Rai's observations in Gurgaon on Wednesday.

"The brazenness (with which) decisions were being taken is actually appalling...", Rai said speaking at the World Economic Forum meet in New Delhi drawing a sharp reaction from Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari.

"If he talks about brazenness in decision-making and if it refers to the time-period of this particular government, I think it would be worth his while to recall that he was part of the same government from 2004 to 2008. And I guess, when he talks about brazenness, that paradigm equally applies across the board to everyone who was part of the government," Tewari said.

Singh said that as far corruption is concerned, "We want that it should be wiped out. We are totally in favour of creating a strong mechanism to wipe out corruption and giving a constitutional status to Lokpal for this purpose."

Singh, had a few days back, also raised the issue of report leaks from the CAG office. "The CAG interim report again leaked. Would the CAG instead of sermonising every one please look into his leaky office," Singh wrote on the popular micro-blogging site Twitter on November 3.

The Congress general secretary had earlier on August 31 caused a flutter by lashing out at the Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai saying that he has a political agenda. He had later also blamed Rai for "leak" of CAG reports.