‘Operation Amar Congress plan’

He told The Indian Express that he was not ashamed of his lifestyle. “I am neither a sadhu nor a pracharak, but no one has right to probe my personal life.’’ Singh was referring to speculation of his taped conversations with film actresses, which he too acknowledged in Chennai yesterday, when he referred to the ‘‘flirtatious business.’’

‘‘Sure, I flirt with my female friends, and I like their company. In Chennai, I also met actresses Shobana and Vyjantimala. I am fun-loving and young man, not orthodox or hypocritical like so many other men. But there should be no character assassination,” he added. Singh added further that he did not want to divulge names of people he may have talked to as it would compromise them.

Singh refused to commit to slapping a legal case against the media if the the alleged tapes ever surfaced and were aired or written about. ‘‘The media has been good and responsible so far. I’ll cross the bridge when I come to it and decide my course of action only when it happens. I will take the matter to the Supreme Court so that Reliance Infocomm could legally submit its findings before the court. Then we’ll come to bottom of the matter,’’ he says confidently.

Singh said that he was not worried about whether the tapes contained conversations with industrialists and moneybags.

‘‘I have been called a fund manager by Sonia Gandhi; Oilgate (Volcker report) involves the Gandhis. What’s the big deal if I speak to industrialists; I am a businessman and arrange funds for the party. As long as there is no sellout or bribery involved, there’s nothing wrong in collecting party funds,” he added.

Surprisingly, Singh praised party’s bitter rival Mayawati. ‘‘Unlike Sonia Gandhi, she is open and blunt in her attack against us. She may have filed 400 cases against me and Mulayam Singh Yadav, but she is not a hypocrite or snake,” he added.

Meanwhile, the PMO has denied involvement of any agency in the phone-tapping incident.