NEW DELHI, 25 October — Former Samata Party President Jaya Jaitley moved an application late Tuesday before the Venkatswami Commission stating the transcripts furnished by tehelka.com website were “grossly inaccurate” and demanded “accurate” transcripts of the contents of the 100-hours of tapes on the alleged corruption in defense deals.
Jaitley alleged that there were “material discrepancies” between the tapes and the transcripts. Considering the plea, the commission has asked Tehelka to respond to it.
The application moved by Jaitley stressed the need to get “true, accurate and genuine depiction” of the contents of the tapes saying it is essential to enable the applicant to effectively present her case before the commission and to rebut all allegations that may be made against her.
Earlier, Jaitley had alleged that the Tehelka tapes were “doctored”.
Tehelka journalist Anirudh Bahl filed a disclaimer in his affidavit saying the news portal held no responsibility for the discrepancies between the tapes and the transcripts, which were made under the paucity of time and money. Tehelka filed its affidavit in response to the government’s allegation of the expose not being a “honest journalistic endeavor” and alleged involvement of one of its financiers, Shanker Sharma, owner of First Global, along with Buffalo Network (owners of tehelka.com) in massive share market operations just before the sting operation.
The affidavit which was accompanied by Sharma’s statement, said the charges were “irrelevant and irresponsible.” The affidavit contradicted the charge that Sharma gained economically by massive operations in the share market before the expose.
If, what the government was saying was true, Sharma would have gained only if he would have been a net seller. Whereas, he was a net buyer, which meant he would have stood to lose on the day of the telecast after which it was claimed by the government that the market crashed, the affidavit states.
Tehelka has accused the center in the affidavit of trying to divert the attention of the commission with “false” charges. The affidavit states that the commission of inquiry was witnessing a dangerous and draconian misuse of governance, where free, dissenting voices were sought to be targeted and muzzled. The very fact that the center, in an unprecedented move, chose to give the commission carte blanche reference to probe journalists rather than on what the journalists had revealed, is bad and dangerous enough, it adds.
