Horse-trading row: Majhi offers to be a witness

BHUBANESWAR: In a new twist to the horse-trading row in the last year’s Rajya Sabha polls, Congress MP Pradip Kumar Majhi on Saturday offered to be a witness to unravel the truth.  Majhi told this paper that the middlemen who had taped the voice of Pushpendra Singhdeo had come to him with the audio tape in January-end. The Congress MP claimed that the middlemen who were five in number had asked him to pay ` 1 crore for the audio tape. During negotiation, they had come down to ` 20 lakh but I did not proceed further. After this, they must have gone to the news channel, Majhi said and added that all the five youths were below 30 years of age. The Congress leader said that the middlemen were promised by the minister to be paid ` 50 lakh for the deal. They expected that ` 5 lakh each will be paid to them. The reason behind making the audio tape public was that they were paid only ` 5 lakh. Majhi alleged that the middlemen were not sure about the sincerity of the ministers. They called Singhdeo many times, talked about the deal and recorded the minister’s voice, he said. The Congress leader, however, did not know to which political party the youths belonged. They must have been persons close to Lanjigarh MLA Shivaji Majhi who abstained from voting. The Congress MP said that he would cooperate with the Home Department probe even though his party wants a CBI probe to unravel the truth. However, there are several loose ends. Majhi said he had brought this to the notice of some senior Congress leaders. But the price was too high, so we could not proceed, he said. Labour Minister Pushpendra Singhdeo had disowned his voice in the audio tape and dubbed allegations against him as a “false and baseless”. “It is a conspiracy to defame me and my party,” Singhdeo said.  Energy Minister Atanu S Nayak, another Minister whose name was also taken in the audio tape, had also denied his involvement in the alleged deal during the RS polls. The Nabarangpur MP said that his party would launch a State-wide stir against the BJD government over horse-trading and large-scale mining scam.