Team Anna calls Prime Minister Manmohan Singh corrupt, seeks inquiry against him

NEW DELHI: Team Anna today clubbed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee with 13 other Cabinet Ministers, whom they accused of corruption, which the Congress dismissed as "unsubstantiated averments" that need not be responded to.

The anti-graft group, which has threatened to launch an indefinite fast from July 25, has picked up portions of a draft CAG report to make charges against Singh when Coal Ministry was with him. They had never made allegations against the Prime Minister before.

Besides Singh and Mukherjee, the ministers against whom the Team Anna has demanded probe by an independent Special Investigation Team include P Chidambaram, Sharad Pawar, S M Krishna, Kamal Nath, S M Krishna, Praful Patel, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Virbhadra Singh, Kapil Sibal, Salman Khurshid, G K Vasan, Farooq Abdullah, M Alagiri and Sushil Kumar Shinde.

Dismissing allegations levelled by Team Anna members Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan, Shanti Bhushan and Kiran Bedi at a press conference, Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari said, "I do not need to give an answer to unsubstantiated averments."

He said this is not the first time such things have been said and answered. "It is not necessary that every unsubstantiated averment needs to be responded to."

Tiwari also referred to a report in a newspaper that Bedi has written to Hazare complaining against NGO led by Kejriwal not using funds properly.

The Team, some of whose members have been accused of financial misconduct, denied the report.