By IANS,
New Delhi : Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha Wednesday said veteran leader L.K. Advani “has not denied” the WikiLeaks expose about alleged doublespeak of the opposition party on the India-US civilian nuclear deal.
“Advaniji has not denied it, you also don’t deny,” Sinha told the Congress, participating in an animated discussion in the Lok Sabha on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s defence on the allegations in an earlier exposed cable that the ruling party had bribed MPs to win a parliamentary trust vote in 2008.
Sinha’s remark gave ammunition to Congress MPs to target the BJP.
“He has not denied. Does it mean he has accepted? That means he has accepted it,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister P.K. Bansal said.
According to WikiLeaks, the then US charge d’affaires in India, Peter Burleigh, in a cable, conveyed to Washington that the BJP’s opposition to the nuclear deal was merely “public posturing” and its leaders, including Advani, were “assuring American officials privately that they were fine with it”.
The BJP-related cable was exposed as the opposition targeted the Congress after dispatches by US diplomats, leaked by WikiLeaks and published in The Hindu, claimed that payoffs had been made to MPs to ensure a majority for the Congress-led government in the confidence vote following differences over the India-US nuclear deal in 2008.
Manmohan Singh has denied the parliament payoff charges.