New Delhi, August 4
BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley and Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh continued sparring over the controversial recordings of the alleged sting operation even as the seven member MPs’ panel viewed the screening of the seven CDs in its second sitting here today.
The BJP had set the tone a day earlier with Jaitley releasing the transcript of the CD filming the “cash for votes” sting operation involving the alleged payment of Rs 1 crore to three BJP MPs on July 22, alleging the involvement of Amar Singh.
Amar Singh reacted to this by publicly showing a counter-CD at the residence of Union steel minister Ram Vilas Paswan claiming to nail “the lies and fabrications” of Jaitely. To lend respectability to his venture, he had on the dais with him SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Paswan and railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, all of whom endorsed Amar Singh’s claims.
Amar Singh also disclosed his source of the recording. He said, “Had it not been for the fact that India TV had done a parallel recording, the truth about the BJP’s attempt to denigrate the dignity of Parliament with this fake operation could have never come out.”
About the man at the centre of this controversy, Sanjiv Saxena, named by the three MPs as the carrier of the bag containing currency notes, Amar Singh said of Jaitley, “You say he is my man, I charge that he
is more your man. Otherwise why did you not get him arrested when he came with the cash?”
Jaitley countered Amar Singh’s charge by circulating some documentary evidence to show that Saxena had mentioned Amar Singh’s official residence 27, Lodhi State as his office address.
Jaitley dismissed the whole Amar Singh show presided over by two Cabinet ministers as “the Cabinet committee on forgery and fabrication is lending its shoulder to this.”
However, Jaitley would not say why he was reluctant to show the CD itself when he had a copy of it, since he had already circulated the transcript. He said, “We will show the CD when we feel it is necessary.”
Jaitley also indicated that the BJP may resort to a legal course, including lodging an FIR after the MPs’ panel investigations. He said, “We will do this when necessary, we will do this after the parliamentary committee has completed its work.”
But Jaitley’s charge was somewhat punctured when one of the MPs involved Faggan Singh Kulaste admitted that the Uma Bharti/Amar Singh CD contained his voice saying “some parts of my voice are in that CD. But whatever is the truth we have told the Speaker.”
