Former Chief Minister Harish Rawat’s media advisor Surendra Kumar made a scathing attack on the BJP on Thursday, asking the party’s top brass to expel its senior leader Kailash Vijayvargiya for his act of bribing nine Congress MlAs to topple the Harish Rawat Government. “If there is any conscience left in them they should promptly show Vargiya the door for the latter’s heinous crime of bribing them into breaking their party,” he said.
He further claimed that they have incontrovertible evidence of the saffron leader scripting the plot and masterminding the operation, inciting the nine MlAs to break ranks with their party. “Vargiya had come to Dehradun on March 18 when nine dissident MlAs walked out from treasury bench and jumped into the BJP bandwagon. He later flew back to Delhi along with BJP MlAs as well as the dissidents the same night, his operation being over,” Kumar said.
He circulated copy of a CD among the media persons to buttress his claim, the CD having footages of BJP MlAs and dissident Congress MlAs flying together in a chartered plane to Delhi.
The CD showed Vargiya as sitting inside the plane with Haridwar MP Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Udham Singh Nagar MP Bhagat Singh Koshyari, state BJP in-charge Shyam Jaju and other BJP leaders along with all the nine dissident congress MlAs- Vijay Bahuguna, Harak Singh Rawat, Subodh Uniyal, Kunwar Pranav Singh Champion, Amrita Rawat, Shaila Rani Rawat, Pradeep Batra, Umesh Sharma Kau and Dr Shailendra Mohan Singhal.
Besides, as the CD shows, other State BJP leaders- Umesh Aggrawal, Sanjay Gupta and Bhupesh Upadhyay and significantly, Saket Bahuguna, son of Vijay Bahuguna, were flying together.
Kumar wondered whether Vargiya had come here to take a holy dip in Haridwar. “We know that this person is notorious for his skill in the game of purchasing votes. We saw him at his best during the Madhya Pradesh election. Even some BJP leaders have pointed accusing fingers at him,” he said, adding that no question could arise on the genuineness of the CD as it was shot with mobile camera or other modern gadgets. Kumar alleged ICICI bank had been used for money- laundering, meant to break the Congress legislative party. “Vargiya is a sharp-shooter for BJP. His skill excels during the night hours. He masterminded the operation while right in Dehradun after darkness descended and flew back to Delhi when it was dark,” Kumar said.