Cash-for-vote: I don’t even know Argal, says SP MP

Four years after he handed the BJP an embarrassing defeat by beating veteran Murli Manohar Joshi in the Allahabad Lok Sabha seat...

Four years after he handed the BJP an embarrassing defeat by beating veteran Murli Manohar Joshi in the Allahabad Lok Sabha seat, Reoti Raman Singh finds himself at the receiving end of a ‘sting operation’ by the party that shook Parliament and the nation on Tuesday.

The eight-time MLA has been accused by the three BJP MPs who carried Rs 1 crore into Parliament as being the middleman in the “deal”, that Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh was reportedly trying to strike with them to abstain in the trust vote.

A shaken Singh, whose father Kunwar Madhvendra Pratap Singh was a staunch Mahatma Gandhi follower, denies the charges. “I am being framed. I do not even know Ashok Argal, the BJP MP from Morena. The BJP MP met me in the Central Hall of Parliament seeking my help for fixing a meeting with Amar Singh… Argal’s claim that I took him to Amar Singh’s residence is a blatant lie.”

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According to Singh, Argal pleaded with him that since his Morena seat had been abolished by the Delimitation Commission, he wanted to contest from the Samajwadi Party. “I told him that Amar Singh is in-charge of Madhya Pradesh, I can arrange the meeting and only he can decide on the party ticket… The party needs winnable candidates and I thought that Argal’s case would be settled as was the case of Brij Bhushan Singh, the BJP MP from Balrampur.”

Hailing from the erstwhile royal family of Baraon, the 65-year-old represented Karchana Assembly constituency in Allahabad from 1974 to 2004, barring 1993 when he was defeated by the BSP candidate. In 2004, he was shifted to the Allahabad Lok Sabha seat, and won.

Singh had his first brush with politics when he campaigned for Hari Krishna Shastri, the son of late prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was contesting from the Allahabad Lok Sabha seat in 1971.

In the Janata Party wave after the lifting of Emergency in 1977, he won for the second time from Karchana. In the first Janata Party government led by Ram Naresh Yadav, he was appointed as minister of state for Small Industries.

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A close associate of former PM V P Singh, Singh got the Irrigation portfolio in the first Janata Dal government in UP formed after the 1989 Assembly elections. Mulayam was the chief minister. When the BJP withdrew support to the V P Singh government following the arrest of L K Advani in October 1990 in Bihar during the Ayodhya Rath Yatra, Mulayam’s government was also reduced to a minority. Singh split the party walking away with 92 Janata Dal MLAs. Mulayam however saved his government with the outside support of Congress MLAs.

After the mid-term Assembly polls in 1991, Singh became the Leader of the Opposition. But in the next mid-term polls in 1993, he lost from Karchana. However, three years later, before the state saw another mid-term elections, he had joined hands with Mulayam again. Since then he has been in the same party.