Thursday, March 17, 2011

Timeline of Cash for votes scam of 2008

This is a very quick update. Essentially I am just documenting here, the timeline of the Cash for Votes scandal of 2008. All these updates have been provided by "centerofright" over at twitter. Makes it easier to follow if all are in one place :)

1. Day before Indo US Nuclear deal was to be voted in LS. Some BJP MPs approached with abstaining or cross voting with money
2. The BJP MPs immediately alerted the party leaders about the same. It was decided to trap the entire episode through sting
3. As BJP did not have the necessary wherewithal to carry out the sting by themselves they approached two channels NDTV & IBN
4. NDTV said as a policy we will not do Stings and IBN said they would do it and wanted exclusive rights on telecast of tapes
5. The entire steps right from the talks till the cash shown in parliament were recorded after taking help from IBN and given
6. When the voting started and cash shown in the house IBN was to telecast the sting tapes. The tapes were not telecast
7. Editor said As Audio quality was bad, Video was not good they are not telecasting the tapes after promise to telecast
8. After the editor ditched the telecast BJP decided officially to Boycott IBN and they boycotted without fail
9. After few hrs/days channel promised again to telecast the tapes and requested BJP to lift the boycott. BJP agreed.
10. The tapes were telecast wr edited & telecast in a way whr the main culprits walked free & BJP shown in bad light

http://bit.ly/gGxmO7 Affidavit filed by Suhail Hindusthani as Witness Statement
http://bit.ly/fsXmx2 #C4V2008 Affidavit filed by Sudheendra Kulkarni in Lok Sabha


NDTV's program that night - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfFWyt7SY-8&feature=youtu.be (Prannoy Roy decides V sign by PM more newsworthy than money shown in Lok Sabha)

http://youtu.be/NrMWmwh_VKE - This is Advani saying UPA victory tainted after the victory

Real thanks to centerofright for sharing this information with us. All these tweets and discussion were mandated because of this wikileak today.

Update: Fellow tweeter, "auldtimer" compiled these facts on twitter. Ponder over.

1. Fact #1 BJP roped in IBN to secretly record *and broadcast* the Cong's attempt to bribe its MP's
2. Fact #2 Both IBN's agreement with BJP and the channel's journalistic duty demanded that the tapes be broadcast *before* trust vote
3. Fact #3: Broadcasting the tapes *before* the vote would have foiled the govt's plans, and an assault on democracy would have been averted
4. Fact #4: CNNIBN did not broadcast the tapes. Suddenly develops huge respect for "due diligence", claims tapes were handed over to Speaker
5. Fact #5. IBN claims it gave the tapes to speaker. BJP says the tapes were actually delivered 24 hours AFTER IBN claims it delivered them
6. Fact #6, further corroborated by Wikileaks: Vote was won with bribes. Big Question: Who all were bribed? Surely not only MPs?

More discussions on Wikileaks to follow soon ... let's first grasp the totality of the leaks :)

5 comments:

Ketan said...

Sudhir,

This is an excellent compilation of various facts and putting them in perspective.

Your blog is turning out to be very, very informative for me and saves me (a very lazy person) a lot of hard work. :D

Thanks!

Sudhir said...

Thanks Ketan. All credit to centerofright and auldtimer. I merely pasted what they researched :)

-Sudhir

Thyagarajan said...

Let's keep the issue in Focus and see how it pans out. Suddenly The Hindu is becoming a champion for these kond of Investigative journalism. Let us hope that they keep up the spirit and comes out with these details, without fear or favor. Rajdeep Sardesai's channel lost out because of their fear and the favours they obtained.

scadza said...

http://marginalia-cicerone.blogspot.com/2010/08/good-man-is-losing-his-goodness.html

A brief analysis over why the liability was kept abysmally low at Rs. 500 crore.

urbanlama said...

I am desperately waiting for Wikileaks to reveal the Swiss bank accounts of all the crooks

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