BeyondHeadlines Special Correspondent
New Delhi: Breaking his silence on the cash-for-votes controversy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said that he did not authorise anyone to purchase any votes.
“I am not aware of any purchase of votes. Certainly, I am not involved in any such things,” Singh said says on allegations that MPs were bought during the July 22, 2008 vote of confidence.
He said people who have been named in the diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks have expressed doubts over the “veracity” of them.
Singh said his comments on coalition compulsion should not in anyway convey the impression that he would not follow strictly the Constitution. The PM also said that one of the major challenges before the government is to give women “political voice”.
Commenting on the disaster in Japan, Singh said, “Tragic nuclear incidents in Japan in the aftermath of the tsunami and earthquake should make us revisit issues of nuclear safety and learn lessons from these experiences.”
“Problems such as piracy require cooperative solutions by several states, both to prevent piracy on the high seas and to eliminate the causes which make it possible,” said the prime minister.
