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Wednesday, Jul 23, 2008
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A conspiracy: Amar Singh

Neena Vyas

Will quit public life if bribe charges are proved: Ahmed Patel

— Photos: S. Subramanium, Rajeev Bhatt

THROW CHALLENGE: Congress leader Ahmed Patel (left) and Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh.

NEW DELHI: The bribing allegation in the Lok Sabha led to a no-holds-barred verbal duel between leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party and the Left with the media used as the medium.

While BJP leaders – L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and others – demanded “immediate resignation of the Prime Minister”, SP general secretary Amar Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel, alleged by the BJP as the bribe-givers, separately stated that they would quit public life if the “serious, but totally baseless allegations were proved”.

In fact, they described the entire episode as a “conspiracy”, with Mr. Amar Singh threatening a defamation suit against the three BJP MPs which “would see them in jail”. He alleged that the three MPs themselves were involved in a corruption scandal earlier pertaining to misuse of their constituency funds and one of them was “suspended”.

The BJP leaders said: “The Prime Minister wanted proof of bribe, now he has it.” They added that “any time now” the “tapes” recording the bribe-giving would be telecast by a “leading television channel”.

However, within minutes of this, CNN-IBN head Rajdeep Sardesai clarified that the TV channel in question was his. The tapes he had were “unverified allegations” and he was handing them over to the Lok Sabha Speaker and he would not telecast the tapes.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat described this as a “shameful day” and claimed “we have the time, the date and records” of the offer of money as bribes “to our allies” to get their MPs to either abstain or vote in favour of the trust vote. He said they did not approach the Left because they know that their MPs could not be purchased.

Mr. Advani said what had been exposed was “not a small corruption matter” but had “grave and serious consequences” for parliamentary democracy. BJP president Rajnath Singh said voting on the trust vote should have been allowed only after a decision on this scandal.

Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan gave some details of how the trap was allegedly laid. “Ashok Argal (BJP MP from Morena in Madhya Pradesh) was unhappy when his name started appearing in some newspapers in the list of MPs who may be wavering on following the party whip. The MP then contacted a friend working with a reputed TV channel and asked him whether the channel would be interested in covering the episode [of bribe-giving]. Hidden cameras were then fixed in the MP’s home,” the Chief Minister said.

Mr. Chauhan claimed “video footage of Mr. Argal going to and leaving the house of [Samajwadi Party general secretary] Amar Singh are there as well as records of telephonic contact between Mr. Argal and Ahmed Patel [political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi].”

Mr. Amar Singh threatened to lodge defamation suits against those who had dragged his name into this affair. He further alleged that the three BJP MPs – Argal, Faggan Singh Kulaste and Mahavir Bhagora – were themselves involved in a corruption case earlier and suspended by the BJP. The case involved release of MPLADS funds to a “fake non-government organisation,” Mr. Singh alleged. A BJP functionary confirmed some “minor misdoing, a technical mistake” by one of the three, Kulaste, in administering the constituency fund known as MPLADS.

Mr. Singh strongly attacked not only the BJP leaders but also the Left for the kind of “conspiracy” the two parties were now hatching together.

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