Ajit Singh rubbishes claim

Congress leader and former Union minister Satish Sharma, whose name too figured in the WikiLeaks cables as one of the two key players who were allegedly involved in bribing MPs on behalf of Congress to win the 2008 trust vote, also denied his role in the entire episode.

Nachiketa Kapur, who was alleged to have been a political aide of Sharma in the alleged bribery episode and had shown a US Embassy employee “two chests containing cash” apart from mentioning that RLD had been paid Rs 10 crore for each of their “four MPs” to support the UPA government, too “vehemently” refuted the charges against him, describing them as “malicious”.

Countering allegations, while Kapur said he knew Sharma but “never worked for him”, Sharma denied of even having a political aide ever by the name of Kapur.

“Our party was against the nuclear deal and incidentally the recent event in Japan has vindicated us. We had extensive discussions with the TDP, TRS and Left and we decided to vote against the government and we did vote against the government,” RLD chief Ajit Singh said, adding that his party had made its position clear days before the trust vote.
He said he was open to any probe into the entire issue.

As against the claims made in the US cables on the trust vote, Singh said, his party had three MPs in 2008 and not four. “Somebody said something and they transmitted it without confirming...it is utterly baseless,” Singh charged.

A set of US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks has claimed that Kapur, a political aide of Congress leader Satish Sharma, allegedly showed a US Embassy staff member “two chests containing cash” and said Rs 50-60 crore was ready for use as “pay-offs” to win the support of some MPs ahead of crucial vote of confidence in UPA government over the Indo-US nuke deal.