People's Democracy

(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

Vol. XXXV

No. 14

April  03, 2011

 

TRINAMUL MP CAUGHT WITH CASH

 

Left Team Demands EC to Act

On March 28, a delegation of the Left parties, consisting of Nilotpal Basu (Central Secretariat member, CPI-M), D Raja (MP and national secretary, CPI), S P Tiwari (Central Committee member, AIFB), Dharmendra Verma (Central Committee member, AIFB) and Abani Roy (MP and secretary, RSP) met the Election Commission of India at New Delhi and submitted the following memorandum. 


WE are constrained to draw your attention to the very serious development where a member of parliament from the Trinamul Congress, Shri K D Singh, was carrying cash amounting to Rs 57 lakh. He was reported to have been travelling on March 24 in a private airplane from Delhi to Guwahati which is a poll-bound state and the Trinamul Congress is contesting a large number of seats. 

We are also surprised by his reported claim that this money was legitimately drawn from a bank for his own business purposes. We are unaware of business activities in the present times which require such a major volume of cash movement. We are also surprised that the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) which held Mr Singh and his associates along with the money and allowed to let him go. And, most importantly, the money itself was not confiscated. We think that this is rather strange because even if the source is known, nobody can vouch for the manner of end use. 

In such circumstances, we would like to draw your attention to the ongoing discussion with the EC bilaterally as well as in the all-party meeting on the subject of use of money power as a growing electoral malpractice. It was in the last all-party meeting on March 9, 2011 that the Hon’ble Commission had observed that any press report about alleged possible misconduct regarding electoral malpractices will be taken suo moto cognisance of and enquiry will be ordered forthwith. 


Therefore, monitoring of the trail of the money found in the possession of Shri Singh and a thorough enquiry of his whereabouts and activities is urgently called for. 

We hope that the EC will act urgently on this very serious development and redeem its commitment of ensuring elections uncontaminated by money power.