Cash-for-votes scam: ’Did not bribe anyone’, reiterates PM

Mangaloretoday News Network

New Delhi, March 23:  "Responding to the Opposition’s charges on the cash-for-votes scam, the Prime Minister today said, "We should not go by what some embassy official writes about us." Dr Manmohan Singh said it was "not possible for the government to confirm the veracity of the communication

Dr Manmohan Singh reiterated, "We were not involved in any illegal act nor we had authorised anybody to indulge in any bribe given during 2008 confidence vote."

Slamming the Opposition’s attitude  as ’undemocratic’, Dr Singh said a further probe into the cash-for-votes scam was underway. The Prime Minister said the probe committee report on the scam was inconclusive.

Earlier in the day, in a stinging attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj said, "The PM is accountable...he can’t keep putting blame on others."  Slamming the PM on his statement on the Wikileaks expose, Swaraj said, "Calling cables unverifiable is equal to avoiding the truth,"

The WikiLeaks cable states that the Congress bought MPs ahead of its vote of confidence in 2008 over the nuclear deal with the US.  But in a statement in Parliament last week, Dr Singh said there was no reason to believe that the cable was authentic, and that the Indian players mentioned in them have challenged the facts stated within.

 

2008 cash-for-votes sting op was BJP trap: Govt

Fireworks took place in Parliament on Wednesday after the government brought to light a fresh expose that could bring more shame to opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Quoting the Tehelka magazine, parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said the expose claims that the 2008 sting operation conducted by a television news channel over horse-trading for the trust vote was a deliberate trap laid out by top BJP leaders, according to Times Now.

The minister revealed details of the expose in the Parliament to blunt the opposition BJP’s attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over his statement on the cash-for-vote scam. Bansal said that BJP leaders had outsourced the sting operation conducted by the news channel.

He added that the entire operation was done with the blessing of top BJP leaders with the intention to discredit the UPA government.

According to the Tehelka, it was not the Congress or the Samajwadi Party that were actively in search for MPs to buy in to the 2008 Indo-US nuclear deal trust vote. Tehelka exposed that it was the BJP which had set out to entrap either a Congress or an SP into buying three BJP MPs so it could pull off a successful sting operation and discredit the government.

In a shocking revelation, the magazine has named three senior BJP leaders Sudheendra Kulkarni, Arun Jaitley and L K Advani, who appeared to have given the sanction for the sting operation.

The reporter who conducted the sting operation in 2008 provided a first hand account of the truth to Tehelka magazine. Phone recordings and copy of the parliamentary panel report in possession of the magazine provided them with the basis of the cash-for-votes expose.