Parliament uproar on details of bribes paid to save govt in 2008.
The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) got a devastating blow today when a leaked diplomatic cable between the US embassy in New Delhi and the US government revealed that at least two ministers and several Congress office-bearers allegedly paid for the support of MPs during the no-confidence vote in the Lok Sabha in 2008.
The leaked cable was published today in The Hindu newspaper and said former minister Satish Sharma’s aide, Nachiketa Kapur, showed a US Embassy official chests full of money and explained to him that the government would survive, “as we have Rs 50-60 crore at our disposal”.
He also reportedly said four MPs from the Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) were paid Rs 10 crore each to vote for the government.
The Congress brazened its way through the charge. Sharma denied he ever had an aide called Nachiketa Kapur. Their MPs tried to outshout the opposition and the Congress spokesmen questioned the veracity of the cables.
The alleged beneficiary of the bribe, Ajit Singh, said his party had three MPs in the last Lok Sabha and not four.
In any case, his party had voted against the government, as it was opposed to the nuclear deal.
But there were other telling signs that the Congress was shocked by the revelation. Not a single minister could be sighted through the day, with the exception of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The prime minister was not to be seen, though he came to the House in the afternoon. Although MPs tried to wear a brave face, they conceded privately that the cable had done grievous damage to the “credibility and legitimacy of the government”.
In a cable, dated July 17, 2008, sent to the State Department and accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks, US Charge d’Affaires Steven White wrote about a visit the Embassy’s political counsellor paid to Sharma, described as “a close associate of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, considered a very close family friend of Sonia Gandhi”.
Sharma told the US diplomat that he and others in the party were working hard to ensure the government won the confidence vote on July 22, 2008. After describing the approaches he was told were made to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Akali Dal, White wrote:“Sharma’s political aide, Nachiketa Kapur, mentioned to an Embassy staff member in an aside on July 16 that Ajit Singh’s RLD had been paid Rs 10 crore (about $2.5 million) for each of their four MPs to support the government. Kapur mentioned that money was not an issue at all, but the crucial thing was to ensure that those who took the money vote for the government.”
Adding: “Kapur showed the Embassy employee two chests containing cash and said around Rs 50-60 crore (about $25 million) was lying around the house for use as pay-offs.”
“Another Congress insider told PolCouns that Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath is also helping spread the largesse. Formerly, he could only offer small planes as bribes,” according to this interlocutor, “Now he can pay for votes with jets.”
The Union cabinet met late in the evening to sharpen the government’s strategy. But the outlines were clear from the statement made by Mukherjee in the Rajya Sabha. He said, “The correspondence between the sovereign government and its missions abroad enjoys diplomatic immunity...Therefore, it is not possible for the government to either confirm it or deny it...The government of the day is accountable to the 15th Lok Sabha and not the 14th Lok Sabha.”
Mukherjee asked Leader of the Opposition Arun Jaitley whether the WikiLeaks cable was “an admissible evidence in any court of law...as per the law.”
When Jaitley said it was an offence of bribery committed by Indians in India and the government was “guilty of a cover-up”, an angry Mukherjee said, “Why don’t you go to the court and file a public interest litigation on the basis of this evidence....if you have the courage, then go to the court.”
In the Lok Sabha, opposition chief Sushma Swaraj said Indian democracy had been shamed by the cable.
It is unclear how the next chapter in this drama will play out. But the Opposition is determined to force the issue.
Go now, NDA tells Manmohan
Emboldened by the Wikileaks correspondence, Opposition parties, for the first time, demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the principal opposition camp, today fielded its seniormost serving leader, Lal Krishna Advani, to gun for the PM’s immediate resignation. “Although in the past we have criticised his government, we did not demand his resignation. But now, after the Wikileaks expose, this government has lost all moral right to continue and must quit forthwith,” Advani said at a press conference, after the opposition benches disrupted the proceedings of the Parliament through the day.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi rejected the leaked cables as “not verified, not authenticated and there is no corroborative evidence of any kind”.
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee talked of diplomatic immunity and that this wasn’t the 14th, but the 15th Lok Sabha. The NDA camp said the latter defence was “incredible” and diplomatic immunity didn’t extend to protecting an Indian offender for bribery. The non-NDA opposition, too, countered Mukherjee and demanded that the criminal culpability involved in the issue be probed.
