Hindustan Times
Will Amar Singh speak out ?
Former Samajawadi Party leader Amar Singh’s arrest on Tuesday did not come as a surprise for anyone who has been following the developments in the Cash for Vote scam that rocked the 14th Lok Sabha just before the voting on the Indo-US nuclear deal.
The filing of the chargesheet by the Delhi police was the outcome of investigations conducted under the supervision of the Apex Court. The police on its own did not arrest Singh but left it for the lower court where the chargesheet was filed to complete the arrest process. Now since the high profile politician is inside, it is being speculated whether he will open his mouth to also implicate some other powerful and influential people in various political parties.
There are many who feel that it is in Amar Singh’s interest that he should keep quiet but there are others who are of the view that the only way of coming out clean for the politician is to blurt out the whole truth or as much he knows about it. This way, the spotlight will shift from him onto others and he could fight his legal battle with his feet firmly planted on the ground. In any case, the decision of whether to speak or not is entirely of this leader who has hogged so much headlines during the past decade that many established leaders had started envying him. It appears his bad times are here since his health is not good and his close friends, Amitabh Bacchan and Mulayam Singh Yadav have deserted him.
The arrest has also sparked off a debate about who was the beneficiary of the entire cash for vote scam. In this context, fingers are being pointed out at the UPA government in general and the Prime Minister in particular. There is also a second theory that the BJP was in a peculiar position prior to the voting. First, a section did not wish to vote against the signing of a Indo-US nuclear treaty especially after the Left parties had withdrawn support on this issue.
Second, the party leadership had come to know that not all its MPs were going to obey the party whip and to save the embarrassment and to implicate the UPA in buying votes, a drama had to be enacted. In hindsight, if one sees the voting pattern in the Lok Sabha that night, the UPA government would have lost the vote if all the BJP MPs had voted against the deal. The BJP had even contacted a TV channel to conduct a sting operation but the TV channel backed out after first agreeing for reasons best known to it.
The curious thing about the whole issue was that neither did anyone in the BJP or those involved in this scandal as also the TV channel in question alerted the police or lodged a FIR concerning the murky deals that were perhaps happening behind the scenes. In any case, now the whole truth must come out and all those who are responsible for this should be dealt as per the provisions of the law.
Amar Singh must cooperate and speak out. The government on its part must not act selectively as it has done in the CWG and 2G scams. There should be no tolerance for anyone who has infringed the law of the land.
