New Delhi: Firing a fresh salvo, Jaswant Singh has said that senior BJP leader L K Advani was "at the centre" of the cash-for-votes scam drama enacted in the Lok Sabha last year.
"It's a great sense of pity. Here was a man who was consumed by an ambition to be Prime Minister, and that desire made him commit so many mistakes.
"Do you know this whole wretched thing of money for votes is a classic example of wrong decision making and it's extremely troubling that he did not stand up and say no. Advaniji was at the centre of this whole drama," he said in an interview.
Singh was referring to the episode in the Lok Sabha during the Trust Vote in July last year when three BJP MPs displayed bundles of currency notes totalling Rs one crore claiming they were being offered as bribe to support the government.
Singh said the facts were clear and he stumbled on to the whole thing when a very strange looking fellow was brought to his house by Sudheendra Kulkarni, a former aide of Advani. "I was not consulted but I was appalled that Advaniji was giving the MPs the go ahead to display money in Parliament," he said adding that Advani had two choices -- either to take the money to the Speaker or into the House. But
he told the MPs to display the money in Parliament.