The leadership of the Jharkhand Congress on Wednesday intervened into ongoing controversy that allegedly some of the party MLAs have either been paid or keen to receive kickback from the BJP to topple Hemant Soren led JMM-Congress-RJD government.
Leader of the legislative body of the Congress and minister Alamgir Alam and state party president and minister Rameshwar Oraon on Wednesday jointly summoned MLAs to seek clarification/ confession whether they have soiled their hands.
MLAs Irfan Ansari and Umashankar Akela, whose name have figured in the police investigation for visiting Delhi and holding secret parley with two of Maharashtra based BJP leaders confessed their Delhi visit. But they denied their involvement in the shady deal.
The congress has 16 MLAs in Jharkhand. Other MLAs of the party namely Amba Prasad, Purnima Niraj Singh, Naman Bixel Kongari, Mamata Devi and some other MLAs were present in the meeting.
Ansari told the leadership that the liquor mafia implicated him in the false case. Ironically, the police acted on the basis of an FIR lodged by the Congress legislator Jaimangal Singh. He had claimed that some hawala operators are in Ranchi to manage MLAs of the ruling party. On the basis of his inputs the police arrested three persons.
Later on, speaking to the media Alam defended any of the MLA has compromised his or her integrity.
“MLAs stand like rock with the party and the alliance and what is being circulated on their name is baseless. This is a coincidence that Irfan and Umashankar travelled together to Delhi which can’t be the basis to prove anything,” said Alam.
Alam further said that he had spoken to Jaimangal to know inputs and logic behind lodging a police complaint.
“Across the country the BJP has been trying to destabilize the non-BJP government. He came to know that some hawala operators are planning something. But he never meant that MLAs are involved in this. In the recent past raids were carried across Jharkhand against hawala operators,” he said.
Alam was in great pain to save the image of the party and MLAs. Some of the MLAs personally conveyed that the silence of the leadership was intriguing at a time when they MLAs are wrongly facing insinuation. They also said that leadership must restrain unbridled aspirations of undisciplined elements of the party.