JAIPUR, July 19:
The Congress on Sunday demanded the resignation of Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to topple the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan.
Citing the two audio clips, in one of which Shekhawat is allegedly heard during a conversation on a plot to bring down the state government, Congress leader Ajay Maken said the BJP leader should quit on moral grounds.
He said the Anti-Corruption Bureau of the state police has registered a case in connection with the audio tapes against Congress MLA Bhanwarlal Sharma, Shekhawat and one Sanjay Jain.
“If Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is claiming that it is not his voice and the reference in the audio clip is of some other Gajendra Singh, then why is he afraid of giving his voice samples,” Maken asked.
He said Shekhawat has no moral authority to continue as a Union minister and should resign so that the investigation is not influenced. Maken also alleged that the police in Haryana and Delhi are giving protection to the rebel Congress MLAs from Rajasthan. He said the Centre is threatening in the name of the CBI because it wants to stop the probe into the conspiracy. The former Union minister also asked why a team of the Rajasthan Police was “stopped by Haryana Police” to carry out its investigation and take voice samples of MLAs Bhanwarlal Sharma and Vishvendra Singh. If the BJP has no role in it, then why the MLAs took shelter in the party-ruled Haryana, he asked in a apparent reference to the 19 Congress MLAs’ stay at a hotel in Gurgaon.
On charges of horse-trading, Maken asked the BJP to “reveal the route of black money” as it is being said that Rs 30-35 crore were offered to each MLA.
Maken, who has come to Jaipur as a Congress observer, said it is the betrayal of people’s mandate and the murder of democracy if an elected government is toppled with money power.
If such attempts are not stopped, then people will lose faith over the voting process and democracy, he added. (PTI)
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