Pappu Yadav said, Congress & BJP offered MPs Rs 40 crore each in 2008

New Delhi: In a sensational revelation, former MP Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav has claimed that three MPs of his Indian Federal Democratic Party received money “courtesy then finance minister Yashwant Sinha”, to join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in 2001. Yadav, in his autobiography ‘Drohkaal ka Pathik’, further claimed that both the Congress and BJP had offered “Rs 40 crore each” to MPs for their support during the July 2008 trust vote.

According to a newspaper, the autobiography, this will be released in New Delhi today, mentions: “The rate for the MPs’ support had to be bargained… Anwarul Haque got an Accent car and Rs 1 crore, Nagmani got Rs 1 crore immediately with an assurance of a minister of state berth later, courtesy then finance minister Yashwant Sinha. PC Thomas also got MoS status. Anwarul Haque and Sukhdev Paswan took money, and when Nagmani did not get the MoS post, he too was given money. The rest did not take any money. I had an old family relationship with Yashwant Sinha.

Before the 2008 trust vote, both the UPA and NDA “approached” me, claimed Yadav, adding: “Both parties (Congress and BJP) offered Rs 40 crore each to MPs. My wife (former MP Ranjit Ranjan) met Bihar in-charge five-six times. She then met Ahmed Patel. Then she met Sonia Gandhi. We had no talks about money even though our family needed money at that time.

Meanwhile, talking to a news agency, Yadav defended his allegations, saying: “All I said was that naked picture of NDA members was out in open in those days, everybody knew about it, so what’s new? Pramod Mahajan and Jaswant Singh were ‘sankatmochaks‘…understand what I am saying. Money and women were offered, alleged Yadav. Yashwant Sinha, however, refused to comment on “what Pappu Yadav has written or said”, saying “it would be injustice to me”. Expressing surprise that Pappy Yadav could even write a book, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley said, “If someone with high moral ethics writes a book, one can comment, how someone can comment on him”.

Bureau Report