Jaswant blames Advani for cash-for-votes scam

New Delhi: Jaswant Singh, a week after the BJP expelled him for writing a biography of Pakistan’s founder MA Jinnah, has new revelations every day about his former party colleague LK Advani.

Singh, in an interview, to Outlook magazine has said that Advani was "at the centre" of the cash-for-votes scam in the Lok Sabha in July 2008. "It's a great sense of pity. Here was a man who was consumed by an ambition to be Prime Minister, and that desire made him commit so many mistakes."

"Do you know this whole wretched thing of money for votes is a classic example of wrong decision making and it's extremely troubling that he did not stand up and say ‘no’. Advaniji was at the centre of this whole drama," Singh told the magazine.

Singh was referring to an episode in the Lok Sabha during the vote of confidence when three BJP MPs displayed bundles of currency notes amounting to Rs 1 crore and claimed the money was given them to them as bribe to support the government in a vote of confidence motion.

Singh said he stumbled on to the whole thing “when a very strange-looking fellow” was brought to his house by Sudheendra Kulkarni, an aide of Advani who left the BJP last week.

"I was not consulted but I was appalled that Advaniji was giving the MPs the go ahead to display money in Parliament," he said. Advani allegedly had two choices--either to take the money to the Speaker or into the House--but he told the MPs to display the money in Parliament.

Singh alleged Advani had failed as a leader. He claimed there were examples when Advani would either keep quiet or transfer responsibility to somebody else on occasions that troubled him or where he is likely to come under fire.

"That is not the trait of a leader," he said.

Singh supported Arun Shourie's criticism of BJP President Rajnath Singh. He described Rajnath as a provincial leader who should never have been pushed up.

Singh alleged the BJP "was no longer a political party”.

“It is a cult or a sect. It has been reduced to the proprietary partnership of a few. This has come about under the leadership of Advani. To explain superficially, the 116 BJP MPs today are like lost waifs."