New delhi,September 07 :Mr Singh had khichdi for dinner. There is a doctor available round the clock in the cell that Mr Singh is in; he explained his medical history to the doctor and also took insulin.
Two former BJP MPs who had said they were bribed by Mr Singh to support the UPA government in the 2008 trust vote were also sent to jail.
The evidence against Mr Singh includes detailed phone records that establish he was in regular contact with Sanjeev Saxena, his assistant, who negotiated with the trio of BJP MPs. Mr Singh tried to deny that Mr Saxena was his aide; the police, however, found several letters written by Mr Singh where he referred to Mr Saxena as his assistant. The car that delivered the money to the MPs belonged to Mr Singh as well. “This is circumstantial evidence,” dismissed Mr Singh’s lawyers today.
But after Amar Singh’s arrest, uncomfortable questions over Manmohan Singh’s victory in the 2008 confidence vote have returned to haunt the UPA. His arrest has reopened the key question: Who was the ultimate beneficiary of the cash-for-votes scam?
In July 2008, the Left pulled out of the UPA government over Dr Singh’s civil nuclear deal with America. 62 MPs therefore exited the government. Dr Singh had to prove he had a majority. On July 22, hours before the trust vote, three BJP MPs arrived in the Lok Sabha brandishing wads of notes. A crore is what they said it added upto, describing it as an advance from Mr Singh delivered through middlemen. The MPs – Ashok Argal, Faggan Kulaste and Mahavir Bhagora – said the deal struck with them was for three crores each; they just had to ensure they abstained during the vote. Mr Argal is still an MP; the other two are not, and were arrested today along with Mr Singh.
The BJP says it’s time for Mr Singh to reveal the names of those he represented. The beneficiaries were the Prime Minister and his government, said both the Left and the BJP today, demanding that the PM now explain why Mr Singh went to such great lengths to help the UPA. “It’s the scandal of the century,” said the BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
Amar Singh is not a political animal like his former political patron, Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Not for him is the heat and dust, the grime and sweat of everyday politics, meeting people from every section of society, commiserating with the poor and voicing his ideolgogical affiliations.
He was the celebrity-networked man-about-town, who must have enjoyed bamboozling his film industry friends with his gaming skills at the political boardgame. He had a good run as long as it lasted.
Singh is perhaps a symbol of politics in an economically liberalised India, where old-fashioned populist politics is infra-dig. The new politician flaunts the glamour factor and his non-political network as a status symbol. So Amar Singh was the politician who was friends with Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri, Jayaprada and industrialist Anil Ambani, who also loves beautiful people.
He was also the man who hungered to be taken as a serious politician. Apart from Mulayam Singh from 2002 to 2007 when his party Samajwadi Party (SP) was in power and he was UP CM, no one else took Singh seriously, especially in the SP.
The 2008 no-confidence motion was the time when Mulayam Singh was out of power and Singh wanted to keep SP in the political arena. And Singh wanted to play a useful role with his connectivity skills. The truth about winning friends for the UPA government in the trust motion is now headed for a long-drawn trial and the prosecution will have to prove its case. The story has unexplained aspects and Singh might not be the only fall guy.
But that is not the moral of Singh being sent to prison for a fortnight under judicial custody. He is an accused, not yet a convict. Singh may want to ponder how the wheel of fortune turns.What went wrong for Amar Singh? Lack of political skills? Absence of political commitment? Or, is it that he did not take politics seriously? His flamboyance, which was more the rumbustious kind, seems to have simply backfired.