Who is in Amar Singh’s bed-rooms and sleaze rooms?
The Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh’s
phone tapping telltale has been meat and drink to the otherwise news-starving Indian media. Amar Singh, known for his high voltage repartee, connections, and connectivity, is now in the centre of all news, which the media and the
public can do without.
Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, tops Amar Singh’s list of phone-tap culprits. Ambika Soni, a Congress general secretary, M K Narayanan, national security adviser, Pulak Chatterjee, an official in the Prime Minister’s Office, Madhya Pradesh journalist, Rajiv Shukla, and a big industrialist are among others in the list.
Amar Singh has claimed that the big industrialist was paying as much as Rs. 80 lakh a month for the tapping. Had he said for how many months payment was made it would have been
possible to get some idea of the
perceived, if not real, worth tapping Singh.
Amar Singh claims he himself had heard the tapes spread over 20 hours. Had he said from where on earth he got so much time for this frolic, it would have been possible to get some idea of his perceived, if not real, pursuits in life.
To the hint by Ambika Soni and Amar Singh’s leader and Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav, that the tapes might contain conversations with women, mostly Bollywood starlets, Amar Singh’s characteristic response is he has not renounced the world, nor is he an RSS pracharak (who has to be celibate ) that he needs to be a dry, reclusive person. Had he elaborated this a bit, it would have been possible to get some idea of his perceived, if not real, worth for a new edition of an illustrated
Kamasutra .
Wondering why Ambika Soni is so worried about his moral standards, Amar Singh says: I am not married to her, she refers to me as ‘Majnu’; all I can say is that only a Laila can understand the pain of a Majnu . Had he elaborated a bit, it would have been possible to get some idea of his perceived, if not real, relationship with Ambika Soni when she was young enough to be attractive to a never-ever-dry Singh, and with how many other women he has been a Majnu.
Daring those who possessed the tapes to disclose them, Amar Singh says he is not going to be blackmailed by the whiff of a sex scandal or illegal financial transactions that are allegedly part of his phone records. If he is not going to be blackmailed, why his tap-dance on a tapping?
The Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi’s question why Singh is holding the entire country to ransom on a personal matter, why is he so hassled, Singh’s answer is I am scared to talk to my wife in my bedroom for fear that Sonia auntie is listening. If he is a never-ever-dry Majnu, who cannot be blackmailed, why Singh’s fear of talking to his wife in his bedroom and elsewhere about his sexual and other exploits?
To Lalu Prasad Yadav’s demand that the conversations be made public, Singh’s answer is let them be made public, but only after Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Shukla and Ambika Soni hold a press conference in the Congress headquarters and admit they were indeed behind tapping his phone. If they are really involved, will they ever admit it? If they were not involved, why should they ever admit something they have not done? Does one see the drifts of a wriggle (if the usage is an oxymoron, it is deliberate) in Singh’s answer?
As they cannot be caught either way, the best thing Amar Singh could is leave the matter to investigating agencies with at least three items on their agenda: If Amar Singh’s phone was tapped, why; if the finding is in the affirmative and the tapping was a sting operation, what was the sting. If Amar Singh is found guilty of crimes, could these crimes have been established other than through sting operation, and will the finding automatically lead to his prosecution? And if sting operation was really necessary and in public interest at least in terms of its outcome, was it not justified?
If politics by its very nature is a paradox, contradictions are bound to be inherent in its working. If Amar Singh is a cut above Natwar Singh it is because age is on his side, wit is on his side, and repartee is on his side. But all these may not add up if the revelations of the phone tap are genuine revelations of Singh’s misdemeanors.
To conclude, the other day, a learned, well-meaning, professor asked me if the alleged phone tapping will be India ’s Watergate. My response was in a land of flood-gates Watergate can at best be of nuisance value .
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