26 June 2001

DID CONG SUBMIT A "FAKE" PETITION TO PRESIDENT?

From Our Delhi Bureau

NEW DELHI: The Congress petition to President K R Narayanan with 6.25 signatures for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the Tehelka expose has come under dispute within a day of its submission Monday evening.

Questions are being raised whether the memorandum submitted to the President is fake or real and whether it is the same memorandum on which the Congress claims to have obtained signatures of 6.25 crores from across the country, including 84 lakhs alone from Uttar Pradesh where the party is still trying to re-establish its feet on the ground.

The memorandum that the President received is at least not the same that was circulated as an advance copy by Congress spokesman Anand Sharma to a select few "regulars" at the thrice-a-week AICC Press briefings (earlier it used to be daily) about two hours before it was ceremoniously handed over to the President.

Two different copies of the memorandum circulated to the Media has also led to doubt on the genuineness of the grand number of the signatures and whether the signatures were obtained on blank papers leaving the signatories in the dark about what they actually signed for except that it related to the tehelka. com website's expose of corruption in defence deals.

Nobody in the AICC headquarters on Tuesday was ready to state whether the people's signatures were obtained on the memorandum that Anand Sharma circulated or one handed over by the 11-member delegation of CWC members, led by senior leader Pranab Mukherjee. Nor can an official clarification be obtained since Tuesday is not the Press briefing day to question the spokesman.

The memorandum that the President received calls for the JPC probe and leaves it up to him as "the protector of the Constitution" to decide "how to save the people of India from this impervious government" of NDA which "has lost the moral right to rule." The memorandum that the spokesman had circulated in advance with the usual understanding from the "regulars" to use it only after it is actually submitted, however, does not stop at demanding the JPC probe but also implores the President to dismiss the Vajpayee Government.

An AICC source, on condition of anonymity, disclosed that the memorandum on which the signatures were obtained was "reviewed" and "slightly modified" before submission by the senior leaders who were assigned the task to submit the memorandum to the President by Congress President Sonia Gandhi before flying off for an United Nations engagement. One of the leaders involved in the alterations, however, insisted that the thrust of the memorandum remains the same that the exposure of defence deals in tehelka tapes "has shaken the confidence of the people."

The thrust of the memorandum altered or not, the political observers point out that even the change of one word amounts to rendering it not to be the original memorandum on which the people have appended their signatures and as such the Congress has taken the President for a ride in its leaders' enthusiasm of making the last minute changes. Someone should have vetted carefully the memorandum before it was circulated to the Pradesh Congress Committees for obtaining signatures instead of effecting the changes later, the observers point out. END