NEW DELHI: Leaders of Opposition in the two Houses, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, said they would move a privilege motion against the PM for making an inaccurate claim on the panel probing the cash-for-vote scam.Jaitley read out extracts from the report of the cash-for-votes committee that identified Sanjeev Saxena, a former employee of the then Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh, as the one who had tried to bribe three BJP MPs into changing their votes during the trial of strength over the nuclear deal.
Swaraj took on the PM over his line that bribery claims were rejected by the people in the 2009 vote. “This way, every criminal accused of murder or rape or any other offence will claim to be vindicated if he happens to win an election. I did not expect the PM to come up with such an argument,” she said.The 2008 trust vote was necessitated after Left withdrew the support of its 59 members to protest against Manmohan Singh’s insistence on signing the nuclear deal with the US. Although Samajwadi Party pledged support to the UPA, it had looked a tricky affair till Congress, helped by some deft “floor management” won a comfortable victory.CPM’s Sitaram Yechury said PM’s assertion that the parliamentary panel found no evidence of wrong-doing was inaccurate. “The committee, even by its majority opinion, says it is for a further probe by an appropriate agency. The case was not closed – TOI
