Senior Congress leader and Member of Parliament from Haryana, Chaudhary Birender Singh, has once again landed himself in controversy and the UPA government in an embarrassing situation, claiming that there are people who shell out up to Rs 100 crore to get a Rajya Sabha seat. He later did a U-turn and said he had been misquoted.
Addressing a rally in Jind on Sunday, Singh said, “Once someone told me that he had a budget of Rs 100 crore to become a Rajya Sabha MP. But when he totaled the expenditure later, he found out that he had spent only Rs 80 crore and had in fact saved Rs 20 crore.” He expressed doubts whether “a man who succeeds in securing the membership of Rajya Sabha by spending Rs 80 or 100 crore will think about the poor.” The BJP was quick to hit back at the Congress, saying that the government was always striking deals and had stooped to “such a low level”.
Singh went into damage control mode on Monday claiming that what appeared in the media was an “entirely wrong version” of his comments. “I just wanted to say that nowadays the trend is that people with money power are entering Parliament,” he said. “I had mentioned that after the Lok Sabha results of 2009, certain figures were given in a newspaper report that 360 of the candidates, who had won were crorepatis (millionaires) and a dozen and half were arabpatis (billionaires),” he added. “There are also certain people who can spend crores of rupees to make an entry into politics. I had said that such elements may muzzle the voice of people who raise issues of the poor and take up their causes,” Singh added.
The Congress MP, a known critic and detractor of his own party’s Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, was the general secretary in the All India Congress Committee (AICC) and in-charge of Himachal Pradesh until he was dropped recently. Singh, who was tipped to be inducted into the Union Cabinet as Railway Minister, had earlier said that intervention by some leaders had led to him being dropped.
