Somnath recommends follow-up probe

NEW DELHI: A day after a parliamentary panel gave a clean chit to Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh and senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel in the cash-for-votes allegations, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, in keeping with the committee���s wishes, recommended a probe by the home ministry into the role of three persons.

In his observations in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Mr Chatterjee said the role of Sanjeev Saxena, a former aide of Amar Singh, Sudheendra Kulkarni, a close aide of BJP leader LK Advani, and Suhel Hindustani , who is alleged to have facilitated the sting, be investigated further by investigating agencies.

���The committee has found the evidence given to it by three persons involved in this episode as unconvincing and the committee has suggested that their role in the matter needs to be investigated by investigating agencies,��� he said.

In its report tabled in the Lok Sabha on Monday, the inquiry committee headed by V Kishore Chandra S Deo had said that the ���material on record does not conclusively prove that the money contained in the bag, which was eventually displayed in the House, was actually sent��� by the persons who were alleged to have sent it for winning over Ashok Argal, Faggan Singh Kulaste and Mahavir Bhagora to vote in favour of the motion of confidence on July 22.

Mr Chatterjee said that since the committee was not convinced with the evidence given by three persons he was referring the matter pertaining to them to the minister of home affairs for appropriate action in the light of the recommendations of the committee.

The committee had recommended that a probe by an ���appropriate investigating agency��� be done into the roles of Sanjeev Saxena, Suhail Hindustani and Sudheendra Kulkarni.

Mr Chatterjee recalled that Argal, Kulaste and Bhagora, in their jointly signed statement submitted on July 25, had alleged that they were ���sought��� to be bribed by the leaders of Congress and Samajwadi Party to help the UPA government by refraining from voting against the confidence motion.

It was following this complaint that a seven-member enquiry committee. Two opposition MPs ��� BJP���s VK Malhotra and Mohd Saleem of the CPM��� gave dissent notes of dissent dissociating themselves from the clean chit given to Singh and Patel . The opposition alleged that the committee did not take full cognisance of their notes.