Vote-buying scandal a threat to the Congress

NEW DELHI: On Friday Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that no government members were involved in vote-buying to win a confidence vote in 2008 and doubted the veracity of the claims, defying resignation calls over the issue.

The scandal over cash for votes is unlikely to immediately endanger the Congress-led government, but it increases the pressure on PM, who is already battling allegations of graft in cases ranging from the $39 billion telecoms scam to the Adarsh apartment scandal.

The opposition forced parliament to adjourn for a few hours on Friday, demanding Singh resign after a U.S. diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks said the Congress paid bribes to win the confidence vote in parliament.

“No one from the Congress Party or the government indulged in any unlawful act during the trust vote … The government rejects the allegation as absolutely false,” Singh said in a statement to Rajya Sabha. “I have not authorised anyone to purchase any votes,” Singh told a conference earlier on Friday.

Newspaper editorials said the report was unlikely to affect government stability as the charges were old. But with Singh’s reputation as an honest elder statesman tarnished, the political space for reforms such as opening up the supermarket sector to foreign investors and the deregulation of diesel prices will further shrink, analysts said.

The U.S. diplomatic cable said a senior Congress party official told an embassy official that four MPs of Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal party had been paid 100 million rupees ($2.2 million) each to secure their support in the vote, which Singh won. The report’s contents were “unverified and unverifiable,” Singh told lawmakers.

A US embassy spokesperson in New Delhi said they did not comment on classified material and could not comment on the report’s authenticity.

The Congress has been hit by a series of corruption scandals, chiefly a $39 billion telecoms scam in which mobile phone licenses were sold at rock bottom prices. The telecommunications minister A. Raja has been sacked and is in prison facing charges.

BJP the main opposition said Singh had lost the moral responsibility to govern following the latest revelations.
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