KT NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI, Dec 15: The Lok Sabha's "cash-for-vote" probe panel has held that "there is not an iota of evidence" either in the tapes or in any of the depositions made before it which may conclusively prove Congress leader Ahmed Patel's involvement in the alleged offer of money to the BJP MPs to vote for government in the confidence vote in July.
The three BJP MPs had alleged in their complaint to the Lok Sabha Speaker that an intermediary had taken them to Le Meridian Hotel to meet Patel who was to give them money to abstain from voting.
They, however, did not meet him.
Since their meeting with Patel never materialised, "the issues whether a meeting was ever fixed, if so, for what purpose, etc become merely matters of conjectures," the committee said while holding that "inferences cannot be possibly drawn from conjectures." As regards another charge of BJP MP Ashok Argal that he and another MP Kulaste spoke to Ahmed Patel from the residence of Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh, who got them connected to Patel from a landline number, the committee said he himself admitted that they cannot recognise voice of Ahmed Patel since they had never spoken to him.
Dealing with the charge on Amar Singh allegedly bribing the MPs, the committee said neither from the tapes furnished by CNN-IBN nor from any material on record makes possible for it to come to a conclusive finding linking him with the delivery of money to the said two members through Sanjay Saxena and therefor it is of the view that "there is no conclusive proof against Amar Singh." The committee observed that the allegation that Rewati Raman Singh, a senior MP of the Samajwadi Party, sought to influence the three MPs to either vote for or abstain from voting on the confidence motion and persuade them to meet Amar Singh at the latter/s instance could not be substantiated with the help of any clinching evidence.
It further noted that there are several loopholes and gaps in the case as regards role of Sanjeev Saxena, who allegedly carried Amar Singh's money bag to the MPs, and his movements from the residence of Shahid Siddiqui, who had just quit the Samajwadi Party, to Ashoka Road headquarters of BJP and then to BJP MP Argal's house.
In a bid to look for the money trail, the committee had examined ten bundles of the currency notes, noted the numbers of the notes on two ends of these bundles and sent the details to the Finance Ministry to get details of persons or entities who had withdrawn the notes that were brought and displayed in the House on July 22.
In case of some of the bundles, names of banks and branches were mentioned while in two cases dates were also mentioned and om some cases no details were available.
The banks whose names were found on the bundles were Union Bank of India (Faridabad branch), Indian Bank (Hauz Khas dated 24.6.08), Bank of India (New Friends Colony), Pragati Gramin Bank, Canara Bank and ING Vysya Bank (13.2.08 and 4.2.08), Punjab National Bank (Nehru Place) and Axis Bank (Gurgaon 14.5.08).
The Finance Ministry reverted back stating that replies were received from all banks except ING Vysya Bank and that "it has been reported by the banks that there is no system of recording the serial number of currency notes issued to the customer and the banks do not maintain any record of serial number of currency notes paid to them."
