By IANS,
New Delhi : Former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh Thursday reiterated his demand that the Lokpal Bill drafting committee co-chair Shanti Bhushan and his son and committee member Prashant Bhushan should quit the panel, following the CD controversy.
“Following the controversy, the father and son duo should voluntarily resign from the committee,” Singh told a TV channel, adding: “You cannot recruit dacoits to catch thieves”.
“The Bhushans say they don’t know me and Shanti Bhushan gave me a free opinion… He said has not met or interacted with me but in 1996, he appeared twice in a case filed by us. We paid fees to him, which he had conveniently forgotten. I still maintain that the CD is illegal but the content is very lethal and dangerous if that is true,” he said.
The audio CD purportedly contains a conversation between Shanti Bhushan, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and then party general secretary Amar Singh on fixing a judge for a hefty consideration. The CD has been tested in various labs which have given different versions on its authenticity.
The government-run Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Hyderabad has reportedly certified that the contents are authentic and that there was no splicing of the tape.
Singh said he has sent the CD to five laboratories abroad and two in the country for testing. He added that even if the CD is spliced, the content is serious and needs to be investigated.
He asserted that the statements made by him and Mulayam Singh during the onversations were not illegal in nature, but the utterances of Shanti Bhushan were more suspicious.
“I am going to follow the words of (Justice) Santosh Hegde, who has said that if the CD was authentic, then the Bhushans should resign,” said Singh.
He added that the Bhushan father-son duo should not “hide behind (social activist) Anna Hazare”.
Amar Singh also raised questions about the plots that the Bhushan family had got at lower than market price and were allegedly alloted through the discretionary quota of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati.
“If the CD is fake, then what about the plots?” he asked.
Congress leader Digvijay Singh also alleged that Shanti Bhushan had paid inadequate stamp duty and undervalued a property in Allahabad.
The Bhushans have strongly denied any allegation of illegalities in land dealing.