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New Delhi: The seven-member Lok Sabha panel constituted to look into allegations by three Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs that they were bribed to abstain from the July 22 trust vote in parliament will summon them to record their statements and collect evidence.
The panel, headed by Congress lawmaker V. Kishore Chandra Deo, held its first meeting yesterday.
It will also review footage from a sting operation by television channel CNN-IBN into the incident.
Three BJP MPs - Ashok Argal, Faggan Singh Kulaste and Mahavir Bhagora - who stunned the nation by whipping out wads of cash in the Lok Sabha shortly before the Manmohan Singh government was to face the trust vote, had accused Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi's political secretary Ahmad Patel of offering them bribes to abstain.
Deo said the committee would not restrict the channel from airing the footage. "I have no power to withhold the tape or allow its screening. The TV channel is free to air it," he told reporters after the probe committee meeting in Parliament House. He was however non-committal on the panel submitting its report before the August 11 deadline.
In no hurry
"We do not want to waste time. We will try to do our best. But we are not going to give an incomplete report in a haste."
The committee was formed by Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee to investigate what has come to be known as the cash-for-vote scandal.
The BJP has claimed that the three MPs were offered Rs90 million (Dh7.7 million) apiece and paid Rs10 million each in advance.
Amar Singh and Ahmad Patel - both Rajya Sabha MPs - have denied the allegation.
Besides Deo, other members of the committee are Vijay Kumar Malhotra (BJP), Mohammad Salim (Communist Party of India-Marxist), Devendra Prasad Yadav (Rashtriya Janata Dal), Ram Gopal Yadav (Samajwadi Party), Rajesh Verma (Bahujan Samaj Party) and C. Kuppuswamy (DMK). The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has demanded that the panel be expanded to include more representatives from both sides.
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