How the money changed hands!

Singh is King & The Kingmaker (Sentinel)

NEW DELHI, July 22: The three BJP MPs who surprised everybody by tabling Rs 1 crore in the Lok Sabha today named SP MP Reoti Raman Singh and SP general secretary Amar Singh for striking a deal with them and giving them the cash.“We were contacted on Monday and told the deal would be struck in Le Meridian hotel here but that could not take place. Later, SP MP Reoti Raman Singh came to meet us at 12:30 am at 4, Ferozshah Road and said please come with me to Amar Singh’s house where the deal would be finalized,” Fagan Singh Kulaste told reporters.Kulaste, along with Mahavir Bhagore and Ashok Argal, emptied a bag with Rs 1 crore in cash in the Lok Sabha today and claimed this money was given as advance to them to abstain from voting. The house on Ferozshah Road is occupied by Argal.“In the morning today, Ahmed Patel (Congress) discussed the deal with us. Thereafter, we went with Reoti Raman Singh to Amar Singh’s house where he offered us Rs 3 crore — Rs 1 crore each as advance — there and then. But, we refused to take the money and said it should be delivered at 4, Ferozshah Road,” Kulaste said.“About twenty minutes later a man came to the residence with two bags full of cash and put it on the table. I asked him to open the bags to show whether the cash was real or fake. Then he took out Rs 1 crore in cash,” said Mahavir Bhagora, another BJP MP who had displayed the wads in the House.“A man telephoned Amar Singh who told me this money is an advance for the deal,” Argal said. PTI source: sentinel assam

The Parliament has lost " Confidence" motion to the Nation

The drama which unfolded in the Parliament on Tuesday, embarrassed whole of the Nation. Read the chilling story of corruption, bribery, and horse-trading. Also read the comments of experts:

3 BJP MPs ‘sting’ SP men bribing them Rs 9cr to abstain

July 23, 2008, TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: The plan to ‘trap’ UPA’s vote managers was hatched on Monday evening, if the BJP's version of events is to believed. BJP, struggling to hold on to its flock that was allegedly being poached by the Samajwadi Party and Congress with the lure of lucre, apparently discovered that its MP from Morena, Ashok Argal could actually do a sting to expose the “murky game of buying and selling MPs". Remember Argal? He’s the BJP MP The Times of India wrote about on its front page on Tuesday. Argal, a Dalit, is set to lose his seat in the coming Lok Sabha election because of delimitation. So, he was antsy — and was being targeted by SP leaders. BJP got wind of this and speedily addressed his problem by promising him an Assembly ticket. Argal, in short, had decided he would not switch his loyalty. But SP managers, determined to swell the numbers for UPA, were not giving up on him, claims BJP. Argal is understood to have told his party leaders about their persistence and the leaders, in turn, told him: Trap them. The plan was accordingly hatched. When SP MP from Allahabad, Reoti Raman Singh, called on Argal at his 4, Ferozeshah Road residence late on Monday night, the BJP MP was prepared. Argal told Reoti Raman that not just him, but two more BJP MPs — Mahavir Bhagora and Faggan Singh Kulaste, both tribals — were willing to jump fence. Reoti Raman is said to have fixed a meeting between the BJP MPs and Amar Singh next morning. This visit of the SP member to Argal's residence is said to have been recorded by stealth on camera by a TV journalist from a TV news channel, CNNIBN, who had been tipped off.

On Tuesday morning, Argal and Kulaste reached Amar Singh’s residence at 27, Lodhi Estate. BJP sources alleged Amar Singh told the BJP MPs that the UPA already had the necessary number of MPs to win the vote. So, he was not in a position to give them too much money. Still, he was prepared to give them Rs 3 crore each for abstaining from voting. To seal the deal by building greater confidence in the BJP MPs, the BJP MPs claim Amar Singh got them to speak to someone on phone who he said was Sonia Gandhi's political secretary, Ahmad Patel. The MPs claim they played along and agreed to the deal. But they pointed out that with television crew deployed 24x7 outside Amar Singh’s residence, it was not possible to carry out wads of notes. Amar Singh is claimed to have offered to have the money delivered. Soon, Sanjeev Saxena, Amar Singh's personal aide, went to Argal's residence with a bag. This visit too is said to be have been recorded on camera, which also captured Saxena taking out wads of currency notes. The BJP MPs claim Saxena gave them Rs 1 crore as “token money" and told them that the remaining Rs 8 crore would be delivered after they had abstained in the trust vote. In the footage which is now with the Speaker, Saxena is is also shown as giving the phone to Argal to speak with somebody whom the BJP MP later identified as Amar Singh.

More Muslim MPs against UPA

Rebel SP MP to vote against UPA, claims support of seven more
New Delhi, July 18 (PTI) Rebel Samajwadi Party MP Munnawar Hasan today announced that he would defy the party whip and vote against the UPA government on July 22."I will defy the party whip and vote against the UPA government on nuclear deal during the confidence vote on July 22. I have support of around seven party MPs. The deal is anti-Muslim and we are against it more so because it is being promoted by the US, which is an anti-Muslim country," Hasan told reporters here.The Muzaffarnagar MP, who has been offered a ticket for the next general election by the BSP, said that he has not formally joined Mayawati but would do so after July 22."Once me and my other fellow MPs defy the SP whip, then we will join BSP," Hasan said.He claimed that he was persistently being wooed by "various people" to vote in favour of the UPA government. "In fact on July 10, one Rupesh Kumar who identified himself as a chartered accountant of a company, offered me a bribe of Rs 25 crore to vote in favour of the government," the MP claimed.When asked as to why he did not register a complaint against the person or inform BSP supremo Mayawati about it, Munnawar said he found the media an appropriate outlet to disclose this information.Though he avoided uttering anything against SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Munnawar said the SP's Muslim votebank had "slipped" and many of its MPs, who did not turn up for the Parliamentary Party meeting held earlier today, were against the deal."In fact some Congress MPs too are in touch with me while SP MPs like Raj Narayan Budholiya and Jai Prakash Rawat are already with us," he claimed. PTI

Mayawati withdraws support to UPA government

Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati has withdrawn her party's support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre.

The BSP has 17 members in the Lok Sabha, which has an effective strength of 543. The UPA currently has the support of 220 members. The Left parties, which have 59 lawmakers as a block, extend outside support to the government.

Mayawati has accused the UPA of neglecting Uttar Pradesh and meting out step-motherly treatment to her party and the UP government.

The BSP supremo sent a letter, stating her withdrawal of support, to President Pratibha Patil and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

Mayawati added that she will not enter into any electoral alliance with either the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party.Mayawati displayed copies of the letter she had written to President Patil, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and Vice President Mohammad Ansari and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.She charged both Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress of misusing the Central Bureau of Investigation and attempting to implicate her in the Taj Corridor case. She accused the Congress of only making false promises. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister said Bundelkhand and Poorvanchal regions had witnessed unprecedented drought, but the Union government did not do anything besides making false promises. "I personally met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and asked him to give an economic package of Rs 88,000 crore and he promised to do something about it. Till date, nothing had been done," she said. PTI adds:

Similarly, she dismissed another question that whether she took this decision because of the reported warming up of ties between SP and Congress, she said both were down and out in Uttar Pradesh.

Mayawati said she had given an open warning to the UPA in January this year that BSP would withdraw support if the Congress-led coalition 'did not mend its ways' and change its step-motherly attitude towards the state government.

The chief minister said though she had expected that the Congress would stop attacking her and her party for its own political interest, there was no change in the party's attitude.

She said that when the Congress-led coalition replaced NDA, headed by BJP, at the Centre, she had expected that the government would ensure that she gets justice in the Taj Corridor and other related issues.

"But unfortunately Congress proved worse than BJP as instead of ensuring justice, Congress has kept the matter hanging during the last four years for its own political interest," she said.

Mayawati alleged that when her party refused to enter into an electoral alliance with the BJP at the Centre prior to the previous Lok Sabha elections, the saffron party 'falsely implicated' her in the Taj Corridor case to exert pressure.

She also accused the previous NDA government of misusing the CBI and filing a disproportionate assets case against her to tarnish her and her party's image. Source: http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/jun/21maya.htm