Jalandhar, July 24
After veteran BJP leader Shanta Kumar’s letter to national party president Amit Shah on setting up Lokpal within the party in view of reported scams by leaders, former BJP minister Manoranjan Kalia today levelled serious allegations against the former.
He accused Shanta Kumar, former Punjab affairs in charge, of misappropriating party funds during the last year Lok Sabha poll.
The Jalandhar Central MLA, in his two-page letter which he titles “An epistle to Shanta Kumar” wrote: “Is it not true that you amassed a huge amount of funds for yourself during the Lok Sabha elections in Punjab as in charge of the party then? When I asked you about the same at your residence in Delhi, you chose to be mum. You had come to collect election funds in Hoshiarpur which you handed over to a responsible person, who thought that it was for party candidate Vijay Sampla and handed over to him. But hours later, you took away the funds for your own elections.” The former Local Bodies Minister even put posers: “Have you given any details of these funds to the party? Was it taken by way of cheques? Where was the money deposited? Was it black money or white? If you are a man of principles, integrity and honesty, you should have got it accounted for in party funds. Was it done?”
Kalia even alleged Shanta Kumar collected funds for Swami Vivekanand Research Centre at Palampur from bureaucrats of his department by organising his birthday party.
Party leaders said Kalia found it to be the best opportunity to settle scores with his bête noire Shanta Kumar, with whom he had been at loggerheads since the time he had been dislodged unceremoniously from his ministerial berth and was not even re-appointed minister after he got re-elected MLA in 2012. Like Shanta Kumar, Kalia too has written the letter in Hindi. The way the former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister used Twitter and Facebook to make his letter public, Kalia too hit the 80-year-old leader via social media.
Kalia posted the letter on his FB account this morning, which got widely circulated. In the letter, Kalia even calls Shanta a “liar” for feigning ignorance over how his letter got uploaded on social media. Shanta Kumar could not be contacted despite repeated efforts.
July 24, 2015 by admin
Shanta Kumar bungled party funds, alleges BJP ex-minister
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