Along party lines

The manner in which the cash-for-vote scandal has been investigated is worrying

That the report of the parliamentary committee set up to inquire into the cash-for-votes scandal during the UPA’s confidence motion last summer has come up with no firm conclusion, is hardly surprising. There were bound to be differences in the arguments/statements by the different parties concerned. Since the committee is not an investigative agency, there was little it could do to come up with a cogent sequence of events. In the event, it has left the investigations to ‘an appropriate agency’. It is unfortunate that the committee report was along party lines, with the BJP and the CPI(M) MPs issuing dissent notes.

 

What is worrying is the manner in which conclusions have been reached, to absolve some and to involve others. The crux of the allegations was that one Sanjeev Saxena gave the MPs money, allegedly on behalf of Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh; after the CNN-IBN sting, the BJP released evidence (phone records, college admission forms of Mr Saxena’s son, his SMSs asking the press to attend Mr Singh’s press conferences) linking him with Amar Singh. While the CNN-IBN tapes show Mr Saxena giving the money (which the committee accepts), Mr Saxena himself says he was given the bag and the phone by someone else. The committee finds Mr Saxena’s testimony has holes and recommends investigation by an ‘appropriate agency’. It is curious that the committee should then give a clean chit to Mr Singh — it explains away Mr Singh’s name on Mr Saxena’s son’s admission form as part of the usual favours politicians do for so many people and concludes by saying that even if Mr Saxena did work for Mr Singh, there is no evidence to suggest he gave the money at Mr Singh’s behest. “In this era of sting operations, it is very difficult,” according to the report, “to say who is stinging whom”!

And what of Rewati Raman Singh, the MP who is alleged to have facilitated the deal? The committee says the audio on the CNN-IBN tapes is unclear (it says CNN-IBN did some audio-video mix blending later, when it aired the tape). But surely the fact that he went to the MPs’ house is curious. Rewati Raman Singh says he went there because Mr Argal, one of the MPs he was allegedly trying to bribe, wanted to discuss moving to the Samajwadi Party — the committee asks why someone of Rewati Raman’s stature should go to Mr Argal’s house in the middle of the night when it is Mr Argal who wants to switch, and absolves Rewati Raman Singh.

The committee’s ire is reserved for BJP activist Sudheendra Kulkarni who with CNN-IBN carried out the sting and advised placing the money on the table of the House. It then argues, strangely, that since Mr Kulkarni helped conduct the sting, he was also guilty of attempting to influence MPs and therefore needed to be investigated further. Quite illogically, however, the committee did not use this argument to rope in CNN-IBN for further investigation by an ‘appropriate agency’.