Kulkarni comes to Advani's aid

Reacting to Jaswant Singh’s charge that L K Advani was the centre of the “cash-for-vote” scam, his former aide Sudheendra Kulkarni came out in his defence.

Reacting to Jaswant Singh’s charge that L K Advani was the centre of the “cash-for-vote” scam, his former aide Sudheendra Kulkarni came out in his defence.

HT Image

The BJP has also warned news channels and periodicals of legal action for showing the ‘cash-for- vote’ scam as the party’s handiwork.

“We will not tolerate these things and the party will consider a legal course against such malicious and motivated reporting if needed,” party spokeserson Prakash Javdekar said.

Refuting the charge of Advani’s involvement in the scam, he said: “Jaswant Singh has talked only about the issue of whether the cash bundles should have been shown in the Parliament or sent to the Speaker.”

Kulkarni, who had flayed Singh’s expulsion from the BJP for his book on Jinnah, said, though he was no longer with the BJP, he was willing to face any “fair inquiry” and believed that the party did the right thing by attempting to expose the “shameful scandal”.

“I do not regret my own participation in the attempt to expose this scandal through a sting operation carried out by a reputed television channel. I wish to categorically state that the cash that was displayed in Parliament by the three BJP MPs did not come from the party,” Kulkarni said.

BJP MP Maneka Gandhi was in a bind with her remark that the manner in which Jaswant Singh was sacked would have been “fair and appropriate” if the party leadership had first read his controversial book.

Later, she backtracked and issued a statement, saying that she supported the BJP’s view on Jinnah “as the person ultimately responsible for the Partition of India…”.