Gadkari meets jailed party colleagues in Tihar

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari today visited the Tihar Jail in New Delhi to meet two former party MPs and Sudheendra Kulkarni, advisor to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who are accused in the cash-for-votes scam.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari Monday visited the Tihar Jail here to meet two former party MPs and Sudheendra Kulkarni, advisor to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who are accused in the cash-for-votes scam.

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Gadkari met former MPs Faggan Singh Kulaste and Mahavir Bhagora, apart from Kulkarni.

He told reporters that the party will expose those who had acted against the “whistleblowers”.

“When BJP gets a chance, we will expose them and send them to Tihar,” Gadkari said.

He said it was democracy's tragedy that innocent people were imprisoned and those involved in scandal were roaming free.

Alleging that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had turned into “Congress Bureau of Investigation”, Gadkari rhetorically said it would be better if the agency shifted its office to the Congress headquarters.

Several other BJP leaders, including L.K. Advani, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, too have visited their jailed party colleagues in Tihar.

On July 22, 2008, three BJP MPs -- Faggan Singh Kulaste, Mahabir Singh Bhagora and Ashok Argal -- waved wads of currency notes in the Lok Sabha ahead of a trust vote, alleging they were given the money to vote in favour of the Manmohan Singh government.

Argal has also been named in a supplementary charge sheet filed by Delhi Police in the case.

The BJP maintains that its MPs had acted as whistleblowers and exposed attempts to buy MPs to win the trust vote.

Another accused in the case, Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh, has been freed on bail on health grounds.