Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi, caught in the controversy over discovering a wad of currency notes in the Upper House, said he was 'astonished' to know about it.
He has sought a proper inquiry and screening of the CCTV footage to unearth the truth of it and also recommended that each member of the House be issued with a lock and key to prevent security lapse in their absence.
Singhvi, issuing a clarification over the controversy, said that he was in the House only for three minutes on Thursday and added that he carries only Rs 500 in his purse. Chaos broke out in Rajya Sabha on Friday morning after Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar informed the House that a wad of currency notes was recovered by security officials during the anti-sabotage check on Thursday. The wad of notes was recovered from seat no 222, the one allotted to Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the Congress MP from Telangana.
Singhvi, sharing details of his stay in the Parliament on Thursday, said, "I am quite astonished to even hear about it. I never heard of it. I reached the inside of the House yesterday at 12.57 P.M. The House rose at 1 P.M. From 1 to 1.30 P.M., I sat with Ayodhya Prasad in the canteen and had lunch. At 1.30 P.M., I left Parliament. So my total stay in the House yesterday was three minutes and my stay in the canteen was 30 minutes. "I find it bizarre that even on such issues politics is being done," he added.
The Congress MP also sought a detailed probe into the incident, including scanning all the CCTV footage to identify the culprit. "Of course, there must be an enquiry as to how people can come and put anything anywhere in any seat.". It means that each of us must have a seat where the seat itself can be locked and the key can be carried home by the MP because anybody can then do things on the seat and make allegations about this," he added.
He also demanded that security agencies be brought under the lens to investigate the failure on their part. "Everybody must cooperate in getting to the bottom of this and if there is a failing in the security agencies that must also be completely exposed," he stated.
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