Taking the ongoing tussle relating to horse-trading allegations between the BJP and the JVM to the next level, legislator Navin Jaiswal on Monday approached police to file a case against former Chief Minister Babulal Marandi. The MlA is one among the six who had changed their guards and joined the BJP soon after the Assembly elections in 2015.
Jaiswal, who represents Hatia Assembly constituency, in his complaint alleged Marandi for cheating and forgery and demanded cases to be lodged under relevant sections including 420 of the IPC.
“Babulal Marandi with mala-fide intentions to influence the case continuing with the Assembly Speaker tribunal and to sensationalise the matter prepared forged documents. He used forged signature of then State BJP president Ravindra Rai and his letter pad by misusing computer and information technology tools and used it publicly under a political conspiracy. He also issued political statements against me and my colleagues. I have demanded lodging cases under relevant sections against him,” said the MlA after filing his complaints at Doranda police station.
In his application, Jaiswal sought that the cases should be registered against the JVM chief under sections 192, 193, 194, 406, 467, 468, 471 and 120-B of the IPC and also under the provisions of the Information Technology Act.
Marandi had last week come out with a letter said to have written by Rai to his party’s national president Amit Shah in January 2015 quoting the amounts to be paid to the six MlAs who had then switched over to the BJP after winning on JVM’s tickets. He after meeting the Governor and circulating the said letter to the media persons demanded CBI probe and dismissal of the members from the House.
Jaiswal in his application before the police said that the step of Marandi was aimed to affect the ongoing trail before the Tribunal by using it as evidence before it. He along the MlAs named in the letter and Ravindra Rai nonetheless snubbed all the charges leveled against them and threatened Marandi to sue in defamation case if he does not seek apology.
Even on Monday the BJP ridiculed the JVM chief for his allegations. “Political countdown of Babulal Marandi has begun with this. He is speaking anything out of frustration. He went up to the Governor with a fake letter in order to mislead her and people of the State. BJP had given him seven days to prove genuineness or seek apology and three days have already passed. After the timeline is over the BJP would file defamation case along with a case of character assignation against him in the court,” said BJP spokesperson Pratull Sahadeo.
JVM on its part also retorted and reiterated its demand to probe the entire allegations. “It is the BJP who prevented its countdown to begun in 2015 by engineering this political deal. Now the countdown has resumed. We just demanded from the Government to order investigation with competent agency which anyhow functions under it. This will establish whether the letter is fake of genuine,” said JVM spokesperson Yogendra Pratap Singh.