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Days after being on the defensive on the WikiLeaks disclosures of a possible cash-for-votes scam back in 2008, a belligerent Congress went for the jugular, bringing cheer to the ruling party. In the Lok Sabha, it was a combative Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal; in the Rajya Sabha, Home Minister P. Chidambaram held the fort.
Emboldening the Congress on Wednesday was the publication of a news story in Tehelka, suggesting that the BJP had masterminded a cash-for-votes sting operation through the CNN-IBN channel in 2008, to destabilise the government.
Indeed, the Tehelka report came in handy, with Mr Chidambaram emphasising that the sting operation was not an independent journalistic exercise but a “deliberate attempt in collaboration with a political party” to destabilise the government, and adding the Delhi Police would include these new revelations in its investigations into the cash-for-votes scam.
In the Lok Sabha, Mr. Sibal quoted at length from the Tehelka report, to great effect. And Congress president and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi, usually very circumspect, was provoked into heckling a surprised BJP member Yashwant Sinha.
The Prime Minister, too, stunned the Lok Sabha when he quoted a Urdu couplet to mock Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj, before going in for the kill, attacking the former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani. Dr. Singh said Mr. Advani had never forgiven him as the BJP leader believed that “being the Prime Minister was his birthright.”
The impact of the combative performance of Dr. Singh, Mr. Sibal and Mr. Chidambaram, together with the publication of the Tehelka report, visibly lifted the mood of a despondent Congress. The Congress may not have been exonerated, but with the spotlight now on the BJP, the heat is no longer on just the ruling party. A Congress MP summed it up: “After today's discussion, there is really very little left to say.”
The Tehelka report, which quotes the former CNN-IBN reporter, Siddharth Gautam, who was involved in the sting operation, says neither the Congress nor the Samajwadi Party was actively looking for MPs to buy — rather, it was the BJP which “had wilfully set out to entrap either the Congress or the SP into buying three BJP MPs so it could pull off a successful sting operation and discredit the government.”
This sting operation “appears to have had the sanction and collusion of respected BJP leaders like Sudheendra Kulkarni, Arun Jaitley and even L.K. Advani,” says the Tehelka report. The story is based on three pieces of evidence — the firsthand account of the former CNN-IBN reporter, 10 crucial phone recordings that show the BJP's Ashok Argal frantically calling up people and shopping for someone to buy him and the other two BJP MPs on the night of July 21, 2008, the eve of the nuclear vote; and the parliamentary panel report which, it says, “is full of contradictory accounts which prove that every player in the scandal resorted to either blatant lies or at least half-truths.”
The Tehelka report, however, does not totally exonerate either the SP or the Congress: while the report shows there is absolutely no credible evidence to support the allegations against the Congress, it also “demonstrates that the parliamentary panel headed by Congress MP K.C. Deo and the Delhi Police did little to collate the evidence and nail the accused.”
Emboldening the Congress on Wednesday was the publication of a news story in Tehelka, suggesting that the BJP had masterminded a cash-for-votes sting operation through the CNN-IBN channel in 2008, to destabilise the government.
Indeed, the Tehelka report came in handy, with Mr Chidambaram emphasising that the sting operation was not an independent journalistic exercise but a “deliberate attempt in collaboration with a political party” to destabilise the government, and adding the Delhi Police would include these new revelations in its investigations into the cash-for-votes scam.
In the Lok Sabha, Mr. Sibal quoted at length from the Tehelka report, to great effect. And Congress president and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi, usually very circumspect, was provoked into heckling a surprised BJP member Yashwant Sinha.
The Prime Minister, too, stunned the Lok Sabha when he quoted a Urdu couplet to mock Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj, before going in for the kill, attacking the former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani. Dr. Singh said Mr. Advani had never forgiven him as the BJP leader believed that “being the Prime Minister was his birthright.”
The impact of the combative performance of Dr. Singh, Mr. Sibal and Mr. Chidambaram, together with the publication of the Tehelka report, visibly lifted the mood of a despondent Congress. The Congress may not have been exonerated, but with the spotlight now on the BJP, the heat is no longer on just the ruling party. A Congress MP summed it up: “After today's discussion, there is really very little left to say.”
The Tehelka report, which quotes the former CNN-IBN reporter, Siddharth Gautam, who was involved in the sting operation, says neither the Congress nor the Samajwadi Party was actively looking for MPs to buy — rather, it was the BJP which “had wilfully set out to entrap either the Congress or the SP into buying three BJP MPs so it could pull off a successful sting operation and discredit the government.”
This sting operation “appears to have had the sanction and collusion of respected BJP leaders like Sudheendra Kulkarni, Arun Jaitley and even L.K. Advani,” says the Tehelka report. The story is based on three pieces of evidence — the firsthand account of the former CNN-IBN reporter, 10 crucial phone recordings that show the BJP's Ashok Argal frantically calling up people and shopping for someone to buy him and the other two BJP MPs on the night of July 21, 2008, the eve of the nuclear vote; and the parliamentary panel report which, it says, “is full of contradictory accounts which prove that every player in the scandal resorted to either blatant lies or at least half-truths.”
The Tehelka report, however, does not totally exonerate either the SP or the Congress: while the report shows there is absolutely no credible evidence to support the allegations against the Congress, it also “demonstrates that the parliamentary panel headed by Congress MP K.C. Deo and the Delhi Police did little to collate the evidence and nail the accused.”