NEW DELHI: Deceit and forgery are back in action as the intraparty fight heads up in the Congress. At least three of the nine Punjab Congress MPs have completely disowned the virulent anti-Arjun Singh letter.

Harchand Singh, leader of the Punjab Congress MPs group, was totally ignorant about the letter till he read it in the newspapers. He said he had been deeply hurt that Surinder Singla, a member of Rajya Sabha from Punjab, had misused his name in such a dirty game. Harchand Singh said he fully supported P.V. Narasimha Rao and his cabinet and did not want to be a party to any slander campaign against any Congress minister.

On Feb.8, a two and a half page closely typed open letter to the CWC members was issued under the signatures of Singla, who is said to be close to Beant Singh and a Rao loyalist. Singhla had claimed that eight other MPs from Punjab had authorized him to issue the letter jointly signed and release it to the press. Singla claimed that other signatories to the letter were: S.Gurcharan Singh Dadhahoor, MP; Balbir Singh, MP; Virender Kataria, MP; Gurcharan Singh Ghalib, MP; Jagir Singh Dard, MP; Kewal Singh, MP; Harchand Singh, MP; and M.S.Kalyan, MP. Harchand Singh, however, claimed that M.S.Kalyan, another MP from Punjab, had also dissociated himself from the said letter. Kewal Singh had informed him on the telephone that he was totally in dark about the letter and was not taken into confidence by Singla or anyone.

Gurcharan Singh Dadhahoor, however, told Indian Express that Singla had taken his permission to use his name in the joint letter though he had not read the text of the letter. Dadhahoor felt that the language used in the letter was too harsh. Four others whose names were used in the letter namely Balbir Singh, Virender Kataria, Gurcharan Singh Ghalib and Jagir Singh Dard could not be contacted to confirm whether ornately had authorized Singla to use their names. Singla, however, insisted that he had taken everyone into confidence excepting M.S.Kalyan.

Article extracted from this publication >>  February 12, 1993