December 10, 2003	Wednesday	Shawwal 15, 1424

NEW DELHI, Dec 9: India’s parliament was in uproar on Tuesday when Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee postponed a statement he was due to make about a former federal minister allegedly accepting a bribe.

Mr Vajpayee was expected to comment on charges against former junior minister for environment Dilip Singh Judeo who quit last month after video footage showed him taking cash from a businessman, named Rahul, seeking a mining contract.

The minister was seen touching the currency to his forehead and saying: “Money isn’t God but swear on God, it’s no less than God.”

Mr Judeo quit soon after the video footage was aired, but the Congress seized on the issue at election rallies ahead of polls to four states on Dec 1.

Despite the Congress campaign, the BJP swept the polls, winning three out of the four states by huge margins.

As soon as speaker Manohar Joshi told MPs that Mr Vajpayee would make a statement on Mr Judeo on Wednesday, opposition MPs, led by the Congress and the Left parties, were on their feet protesting.

“It is your decision which is being ignored by the government,” Congress leader Priyaranjan Dasmunshi said.

“This shows that parliament is not being taken seriously,” said Communist Party of India Marxist leader Somnath Chatterjee.

At the weekend, the BJP alleged that senior Congress leader Ajit Jogi had tried to bribe newly elected BJP legislators to defect.

At a news conference, BJP leaders played a recorded telephone conversation they said was of Mr Jogi offering 2.5 million rupees (97,826 dollars) to the BJP’s Virendra Pandey to lead 17 BJP legislators in the state of Chhattisgarh to defect.

The move was apparently aimed at preventing the BJP from taking over the Chhattisgarh state government from the Congress, which was defeated by a huge margin in the polls.

The allegation is a severe embarrassment for the opposition party, especially as Mr Jogi allegedly said that he had a mandate from Congress president Sonia Gandhi to try to get the BJP legislators to break away. This was denied by Congress leaders. —AFP