Singhvi quits from Parl panel, as Cong spokesman

Embroiled in a CD controversy, Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi on Monday resigned as chairman of a parliamentary committee and party spokesperson in a damage control exercise ahead of the resumption of the budget session Tuesday.

53- year-old Singhvi, an eminent lawyer and a Rajya Sabha member, sent a letter to Congress President Sonia Gandhi informing her of his decision ten days after circulation of a CD purportedly involving him.

"I have done this only to prevent even the slightest possible parliamentary disruption regarding the purported CDs being circulated about me.

"Since I am a disciplined party soldier, I did not think it fit to subject the party to any inconvenience on this account. All allegations are patently baseless and false," he said in a statement.

Singhvi acquired high profile after the committee headed by him came out with a report on the Lokpal last year on whose recommendation the government brought a legislation on the issue.

Singhvi, who was taken off the AICC briefing last week, said that "canards and baseless" allegations were being spread about alleged inappropriate conversations in the alleged CD.

"People inimically opposed to me, who have assiduously spent over ten days hearing, seeing, amplifying and distilling the CD found no vestige of any reference, not even remotely, to any illegality, corrupt practice or wrongdoing.

"Specifically, some sections of the print and visual media are spreading a falsehood simply by repetition and hearsay that there is a reference in the CD to the promise of any post. No one has heard any such reference in the CD. There is none simply because it does not exist. It is pure imagination, wishful thinking and sensationalism," he said.

Singhvi said the canard was spread simply to give the issue a public interest flavour since otherwise the contents of the CD, "assuming them to be true, (which they certainly are not), would disclose only something private and consensual giving a cause of action only to aggrieved family members (who have stood completely by me) and to no one else".

Singhvi said it was lamentable that such canards were being spread about a CD, which has, in fact, been accepted thrice over to be "fabricated and morphed".

"The driver's disclosure statement to the police, his detailed written statement (i.e. written pleading) in the high court and his oral statement recorded on oath physically in the presence of the judge, all explain how and why he created this fabrication.

"A reputed media house, which was co-defendant in the suit also recorded a consent statement based on the statement of the author of the CD i.e. the driver. A permanent final decree of injunction has been passed over five days ago," he said.

Singhvi said it was noteworthy that the driver's threatening and blackmailing SMSes sent to his phone had been recorded in the last week of March followed by a detailed four-page police complaint filed as far back as March 29, a full 13 days before the alleged CDs first surfaced in the media.

"Either the CD is morphed or it is not. In either event it raises no public interest issues, yet evokes salacious private and prurient interest and contumacious internet violation of a flagrant kind.

"As a political or professional class, instead of gleefully watching, promoting or participating in a person's natural and understandable discomfitures, we must respect privacy issues," he said.