Rediff
New Delhi, Aug 30: Terming the cash-for-votes scam as incomparable and more obnoxious than Bofors, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani on Saturday alleged that it could not have happened without the knowledge and consent of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi .
"This could not have happened without the knowledge and consent of top leadership of the Congress and the government. The nation expects Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh to break their silence on this unprecedented scandal," Advani said at a conference on 'Governance and Politics', organised by the Legal and Legislative Cell of the BJP.
He expressed hope that the Parliamentary Committee probing the cash-for-vote scam would bring out the truth. "However, I would like to warn the Congress leaders and the government that any attempt to cover up truth in this scandal -- as was done by the Joint Parliamentary Committee in the Bofors case -- will not be tolerated by people. That happened in 1989; it will happen again in 2009," Advani said.
Quoting from comments made in a newspaper column, the Leader of Opposition said after the scam, Singh's reputation for personal honesty had been dented and he was now 'just another sullied politician'.
Advani said the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance had preferred defeat to horse-trading in 1999 when the NDA government fell by one vote. "Nobody, not even our critics, accused us of having indulged in horse-trading to retain power."
The BJP is committed to good politics and good governance, Advani said.