Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushma Swaraj, who has been holding forth on behalf of Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat for the presidential election dismissed Congress charges that Shekhawat, when he was a police constable, was suspended for accepting money while on duty.
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Swaraj said there was no case against Shekhawat.
"In the BJP, nobody wants to touch the hot question even with a barge pole. Sushma Swaraj will only answer this question," BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said when asked to react to the Congress allegation.
He dealt in detail on the memorandum he along with Vijay Kumar Malhotra and Anant Kumar had presented to Navin Chawla.
Lal Kishenchand Advani had demanded that MPs and MLAs, presidential and vice presidential aspirants declare their assets.
"Since your letter is addressed to the CEC, I will only hand over the letter to him on July 5 when he is back in Delhi," Chawla curtly told the delegation.
Swaraj ruled out any unilateral declaration by Shekhawat of his assets in order to exert pressure on his rival United Progressive Alliance and Left nominee Pratibha Patil.
"Why should we do it? We will wait till the Election Commission gives its ruling," she said in response to a question from this rediff.com correspondent.
She ruled out Shekhawat resigning from the post of vice president to give a level playing field to Pratibha.
"Why? There were so many vice presidents before him who contested the elections for President, but never resigned from their post. This includes Dr Zakir Hussain, Dr Radhakrishnan, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma and so on," she pointed out.
After scrutiny, only the nomination papers of Pratibha and Shekhawat were found to be true. The rest 82 sets were rejected on various grounds. Majority of them did not have any supporting signature.
But where are the numbers? What is preventing Mamata Banerjee from supporting Shekhawat? Why is Third Front not willing to come out in the open in favour of the vice president?
"Mamata is Delhi and she has told us that she will support Shekhawat. Third Front leaders are waiting for Chandrababu Naidu to return on July 7. After that, they will hold a meeting and decide on the issue. But we are on the job.
We have formed committees at the state level where BJP is ruling, which will consist of the state unit president, chief whip, person in charge of the state and two MPs who have been deputed to hold these meetings and muster support for Shekhawatji.
I am going to Rajasthan on July 4 to conduct one such meeting. Advaniji will be going to Madhya Pradesh, Arunji (Jaitley) will hold a meeting in Bihar.
Where we have NDA governments, we will have joint meetings of BJP and NDA allies and their leaders would also be included. Venkaiah Naidu will go to Karnataka, Ravi Shankar to Uttarakhand and Dr Murli Manohar Joshi to Uttar Pradesh.
Our support in growing. In Jammu and Kashmir, we had just one vote. With the Panther's Party switching over sides, we have now got five," Swaraj said.
