IT was easy for the Government to fob off the claim made by the hawala kingpin in his confessional statement to the CBI that he hadpaid Rs 3.55 crore to Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, part of it to effect a defection in the Opposition. The explanation provided was that S.K. Jain had done it to throw the investigation off the tracks. And even the CBI said that since there was no corroborative evidence, there was little they could do about the matter.
However, the allegation that Rao paid over Rs 1 crore to four Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) MPs to save his government from an Opposition-sponsored no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha in July 1993 is not easy to dismiss. For though the JMM MPs have denied receiving money from the Prime Minister, and the Congress Party has characteristically termed the charges as "baseless", there is strong circumstantial evidence pointing to a deal. On August 1, four days after the no-confidence vote, JMM leader Suraj Mandal deposited Rs 30 lakh at the Nauroji Nager branch of the
Punjab National Bank under a fake address (M-12, Green Park). He lives at 14E, Feroze Shah Road, 10 km away from the address he had mentioned. Simultaneously, his fellow MPs—Shibu Soren, Siman Marandi and Shailendra Mahato who had helped Rao tide over the crisis—also deposited money in the same bank but in joint accounts with their wives, clearly indicating that this was no party fund.
The matter came to light through a public interest litigation filed by Ravinder Kumar, president of the Rashtriya Mukti Morcha. Kumar, in fact, went to court after the CBI DSP G.N. Gupta told him that the department would initiate an investigation only if he removed the Prime Minister's name from the complaint. The petition alleged that Mandal had received the amount as a quid pro quo for the Parliament vote, and that the money was part of the amount Rao himself had got from Jain.
Mahato, who has since left the JMM and joined the BJP, in fact, created a sensation when he appeared at a press conference along with BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee and Ram Jethmalani to claim that Mandal gave him the money which came from Rao for "political activities". Two days later, Mahato admitted in the Lok Sabha that Mandal had given him the money but did not elaborate.
But certain key questions remain unanswered, and could well put the JMM MPs as well as the Prime Minister in the dock.
Both Mandal and Mahato have claimed that the money in the bank was meant for the party. But no one has yet explained why the JMM never made any move to recover the money from Mahato even a month after he left the party and joined the BJP. Also, how did four JMM leaders make such a huge deposit in cash within four days of the no-confidence vote and where did it come from? And how did their wives figure in it?
The Delhi High Court has taken cognisance of Kumar's petition and has asked the CBI to investigate. But the political ramifications are just about unfolding.
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