Sushma targets PM, demands CBI inquiry into cash for vote scam

New Delhi: In a hard-hitting speech, Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj today sought to demolish one by one all the defence Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had put up on the cash for vote scam and demanded the matter be referred to the CBI with inclusion in the FIR of the names in the Wikileaks expose as published in ‘The Hindu’ of March 17.Ms Swaraj was taking part in the discussion on the Wikileaks expose and the Prime Minister’s statement on it under rule 193 that began around 1100 hrs in a charged atmosphere in the Lok Sabha, with the Opposition and Treasury benches breaking into vitriolic verbal clashes frequently. Speaker Meira Kumar made vain efforts to calm them down.
Ms Swaraj said there was a contradiction between what the Prime Minister told the House on March 18 and what the House’s Privileges Committee had concluded in its report on the cash for vote scam.
She sought to point out that while the Prime Minister in his statement said that the Committee had come to the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to prove the charges of bribery, the fact was that the Committee had said that the matter needed to be investigated by a proper investigating agency.
The LoP referred to some excerpts from the autobiography of former Speaker Somnath Chatterjee in which he had said that he had told the House on December 16, 2008 that the matter had been referred to the Home Ministry. She said a case was finally registered with the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police on January 24, 2009.
She also asked the Prime Minister to refer to sub para 15 of the para 141 of the Privileges Committee’s report which says that ”Shri Saxena was a bribe giver wittingly or unwittingly”.
Moreover, the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Hyderabad had also come to the conclusion that the tapes were not tampered with, she pointed out.
The LoP said ”it had become the habit of the Prime Minister to shut his eyes to the truth and say that he does not know about it.” But, she added, he could not escape his responsibility by pretending that he was not aware of any act of bribery, as according to principles of jurisprudence, a person was liable to be guilty if he or she was going to be beneficiary of such an act.