‘Advani was at centre of cash-for-vote drama in LS’

“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,” he told Outlook magazine.

Singh was referring to the episode in the Lok Sabha during the Trust Vote in July last year when three BJP MPs displayed bundles of currency notes totalling Rs one crore claiming they were being offered as bribe to support the government.

Singh said the facts were clear and he stumbled on to the whole thing when a very strange looking fellow was brought to his house by Sudheendra Kulkarni,a former aide of Advani.

“I was not consulted but I was appalled that Advaniji was giving the MPs the go ahead to display money in Parliament,” he said adding that Advani 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 said it was a matter of great sadness that Advani had singularly failed in his function as a leader to lead. A leader will have to lead by example and not through diktats,vague and unspecified insinuations and fears.

Citing the example of the army where leaders take responsibility,he said there were numerous examples when Advani would either keep quite or transfer responsibility to somebody else on occasions that troubled him and where he is likely to come under fire. “That is not the trait of a leader.”

On Arun Shourie’s description of Rajnath Singh as a Humpty Dumpty,Singh said the BJP president was a provincial leader who should never have been pushed up.

On BJP,he said “this is 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.”

The former External Affairs and Defence Minister said he did not support the decisions like banning of overflights to Pakistan and deployment of troops during ‘Operation Parakram’ when he was away on some visit.

He said he was also greatly distressed when the BSF was sent into Bangladesh and a “wounding photograph” of the body of a BSF soldier being carried slunge on a bamboo appeared in the media.

“I never really was able to illicit an answer as to who ordered the BSF to go into Bangladesh. Is it not the Home Ministry,” he said.

Singh told Tehelka weekly that Advani talked of stepping down for about two to three hours after the election results came out.

“I don’t know what happened but he changed his mind. At about 11:30 am he was all for stepping down and by 4:30 or by 5 pm he was all for staying on. That is a characteristic of Advani’s decision making processes,” he said.

Talking about corruption,he said he had told Advani “please,stop this rot of India.”

Without disclosing any names,he said as a government the UPA was a champion of corruption but in the states where the BJP was in power it was running very hard to catch up with the UPA.

To a question about Rajnath Singh’s refusal to introspect even after the debacle in Uttar Pradesh,Singh said “do ask Rajnathji if he knows the spelling of introspection.”