EDITS | Tuesday, September 8, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Tainted Congress blames BJP!
A Surya Prakash
Cashing in on the current vulnerability of Mr LK Advani on the Kandahar and Jinnah issues, the Congress is making a sinister attempt to foist the charge that he ‘masterminded’ the cash-for-votes scam in Parliament last year! Mr Advani, as we all know, has a lot to answer for in regard to his stated positions on the hijacking of IC-184 in December 1999 and on the founder of Pakistan, but to insinuate that he engineered the bribing of MPs is preposterous.
What is shocking is that sections of the media which are close to the Congress have conspired with it in this crude attempt to wash away its sins vis-à-vis the bribery scandal and to pin the blame on the very party whose MPs it sought to bribe. If we allow those behind this calumny to get away with it, it would be a signal disservice to Parliament. We, therefore, need to remind ourselves of the facts of the case and of the conclusions drawn by the parliamentary committee that probed the scandal.
The sequence of events is as follows: On July 22, 2008, when the Lok Sabha was debating the motion of confidence in the Council of Ministers, three members of the BJP offloaded bundles of currency notes on the Table of the House. They alleged that the Manmohan Singh Government had tried to win over their support through bribery.
Mr Amar Singh of the Samajwadi Party (which jumped to the Government’s support) had declared at a Press conference that one BJP MP — Mr Brij Bhushan Saran Singh — would vote for the Government. He also made it known that more defections were in the offing.
“When we open our cards on July 22, many will be taken aback” he had boasted.
Sure enough, Mr Rewati Raman Singh, general secretary of his party, contacted some BJP members and met them at the residence of one of them — Mr Ashok Argal — around midnight of July 21-22. Two of the MPs met Mr Amar Singh next morning. According to these MPs, Mr Singh offered them Rs 3 crore each if they abstained from voting and promised to immediately send a down payment with his assistant Sanjeev Saxena. He also got them to speak to Mr Ahmed Patel, general secretary of the Congress.
Shortly after this meeting, Mr Saxena arrived at the residence of Mr Argal and placed Rs 1 crore on the table. The MPs said that Mr Saxena also contacted Mr Amar Singh on his mobile and got the three MPs to speak to him. The balance of Rs 8 crore was to be paid later.
The BJP was in touch with a private television channel to conduct a sting operation on this attempt to bribe its MPs. The channel recorded Mr Rewati Raman Singh’s meeting with the MPs and Mr Saxena placing bundles of currency in front the MPs. There was no record of the MPs’ meeting with Mr Amar Singh. The BJP claims that the understanding with the channel was that it would telecast the sting right away. When this did not happen, the MPs tabled the bribe money in Parliament to expose the Government.
The Speaker appointed a seven-member committee headed by Mr Kishore Chandra Deo, a senior parliamentarian and chairman of the Privileges Committee of the House, to probe the allegations. After examining the ‘sting’ tapes and recording the testimony of those involved in the operation, the committee said it was not possible to reach “a conclusive finding linking Mr Amar Singh with the delivery of the money to the said two MPs through Mr Saxena”. There was also no evidence that could “conclusively prove Mr Ahmed Patel’s involvement”.
As regards Mr Rewati Raman Singh, the committee found his testimony to be unconvincing. He claimed that he visited Mr Argal’s house to discuss the MP’s desire to seek a Samajwadi Party ticket in the next election. The committee said it was unable to understand why Mr Singh would “hotfoot” to the MP’s house for this purpose in the middle of the night and on the eve of the crucial vote. The meeting could very well have taken place the next day.
“It seems improbable that there could have been any understanding regarding Samajwadi Party ticket for Mr Argal without there being some quid pro quo arrangement requiring Mr Argal to vote in favour of motion of confidence, particularly in view of the timing of the meeting,” the committee said. This view, the committee added, was strengthened by Mr Singh’s remarks on tape, namely, “Don't worry… I have talked to him in your presence… The amount will be settled in your presence... You will get the money there… Let us move now.”
The committee said “unfortunately” there was nothing on record “to prove beyond reasonable doubt” that Mr Singh was acting on Mr Amar Singh's behalf. It, however, felt that a person of Mr Rewati Raman Singh’s eminence and standing “should not have involved himself in such shenanigans”.
Mr Saxena is another key character in this drama. He claimed that he was never under “direct employment” of Mr Amar Singh. He worked for a private company which meant occasional work at Mr Singh’s residence and, strange as this may seem, he quit this job on July 21, 2008 (a day before the attempted bribery). On July 22 he was given a bag by some one in Asoka Road and asked, “under duress”, to deliver it to the MP. He was also given a mobile phone and asked to state certain things to someone whom he did not know.
The committee declared that “Mr Saxena was a bribe giver wittingly or unwittingly”. On whose behalf was he operating? The committee said there was no material before it to answer this question. It, therefore, said his role and involvement must be looked into by an investigating agency.
For those who wish to see, there is damning circumstantial evidence in Mr Deo’s report to establish that the Government of the day was up to some hanky-panky on the eve of the crucial vote in the Lok Sabha. Yet, a full year after the bribery scandal, we are still clueless about Mr Saxena’s role. We are not troubled by the fact that he lied through his teeth before a committee of Parliament. Nor are we troubled by the committee’s indictment of Mr Rewati Raman Singh.
Instead, if you believe sections of the media that are constantly batting for the Congress, the villain in this story is Mr Advani, the leader of the party whose MPs were sought to be bribed. God save our ‘independent’ media. God save our democracy!
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