The Hindu : National : “Examine how currency wads were taken into Parliament”

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Tuesday, Aug 05, 2008
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“Examine how currency wads were taken into Parliament”

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Monday said the Lok Sabha Speaker should examine how the ‘cash-for-votes’ currency notes made their way into Parliament.

Referring to the display of wads of currency notes by three BJP MPs in the Lok Sabha a couple of hours before the trust vote on July 22, AICC spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan charged the Opposition MPs with “compromising Parliament’s security” and said the Speaker should “go into it.”

Rejecting the BJP’s claim of being in possession of “documentary evidence” to prove that an attempt was made to allegedly “bribe” the three MPs for the trust vote, Ms. Natarajan said “they have not produced a shred of evidence to implicate anyone other than their own MPs.”

She said the BJP needed to answer why the money was not handed over to the police, why no complaint was made to the police, how the money reached Parliament House, where was it kept in Parliament and how the MPs bypassed security cameras in Parliament? “If these MPs smuggled money into Parliament, with the approval of the leadership of the party, we then feel that the security of Parliament stands compromised.”

“If there was at all any truth in the allegation made by these MPs, then they should have contacted the Speaker at the earliest point of time instead of timing [their disclosure] at 4 p.m. when they knew that the vote was to happen and that they would lose the vote,” Ms. Natarajan said.

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