New Delhi:
India saw a fiery debate by its top politicians in parliament on Wednesday on the issue of cash-for-votes; accusations that the UPA's victory in the 2008 vote of confidence was tainted by bribes to MPs.
The BJP says proof of this was in the WikiLeaks cables and the money BJP MPs had produced in the house in 2008.
But a combative government made the point that the entire sting was stage-managed by the BJP to try and embarrass the government.
(Watch: BJP stage-managed cash-for-votes, says Pawan Bansal)The Prime Minister, in his response to charges levelled by the Opposition, said the authenticity of the WikiLeaks cables could not be verified and the house was wasting precious time on this instead of discussing other pressing issues.
(PM's statement in Parliament)"We should not go by what some embassy official writes about us," Dr Manmohan Singh said.
Dr Manmohan Singh reiterated, "We were not involved in any illegal act nor we had authorised anybody to indulge in any bribe given during 2008 confidence vote."
Slamming the Opposition's attitude as 'undemocratic', Dr Singh said a further probe into the cash-for-votes scam was underway. The Prime Minister said the probe committee report on the scam was inconclusive.
Quoting from the KCS Deo report, Dr Singh said, " The Committee after taking into account their findings and conclusions in the matter [as detailed in para 141 particularly at (xiv) to (xvii) relating to the roles of Shri Sanjeev Saxena, Shri Suhail Hindustani and Shri Sudheendra Kulkarni], recommend that this matter may be probed further by an appropriate investigating agency."
"I leave it to the good sense of this House to decide for itself whether the report of the Committee in any way substantiates the wild allegations levelled by some Hon'ble Members of the Opposition," he added.
The Prime Minister also lashed out at senior BJP leader LK Advani.
(Watch: Advani believes being PM is his birthright, says Manmohan Singh) Earlier in the day, in a stinging attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj said, "The PM is accountable...he can't keep putting blame on others."
Slamming the PM for his statement on the WikiLeaks expose, Swaraj said, "Calling cables unverifiable is equal to avoiding the truth,"
Swaraj said the investigation into the cash-for-votes scandal was moving at a snail's pace and there has not been much progress in the three years after the case was registered.
(Watch)On the Prime Minister's contention that correspondence between the US Embassy and its government in Washington was "speculative, unverified and unverifiable", the BJP leader said it amounted to "turning a blind eye to the truth".
She asked why an Embassy official would name any minister or anybody else unnecessarily. "Did he have any enmity with the minister?"
The WikiLeaks cable states that the Congress bought MPs ahead of its vote of confidence in 2008 over the nuclear deal with the US. But in a statement in Parliament last week, Dr Singh said there was no reason to believe that the cable was authentic, and that the Indian players mentioned in them have challenged the facts stated within.
(Read - WikiLeaks: Congress bought MPs for trust vote over nuclear deal)The BJP has alleged that the Prime Minister "misled" the House by claiming that MPs were not bribed during the July 2008 trust vote even though the Parliamentary probe committee said that money was paid.
Terming the Prime Minister's statement on WikiLeaks expose, made last Thursday, as disappointing, BJP leader Arun Jaitley said, "Wikileaks cables are verifiable under law". "Efforts are being made to cover up the truth," he added.
(Watch)"Does electibility or populism condone criminality?" asked Jaitley in response to Dr Singh's argument that UPA-I won the confidence motion in July 2008 with 275 votes in its favour and 256 against it.
Revelations by WikiLeaks of Congress buying MPs to win the vote-of-confidence over the crucial Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008 unleashed a high-volume new political controversy.
(Read & Watch: Cash-for-votes cables are authentic, Assange tells NDTV)
Three BJP MPs walked into the Lok Sabha with cash that they said added upto three crores. They claimed that that they had been offered this money to vote for the nuclear deal and had planned a sting operation to prove this.
A Lok Sabha committee, headed by Congress MP KCS Deo, was set up to examine their allegations, but found that there was no evidence of the BJP's claims. Mr Deo told NDTV that he does not believe the WikiLeaks revelation merits a re-examination of what transpired.