New Delhi: Defending its leaders targeted by the controversial sting Operation, the Aam Aadmi party on Sunday claimed that the CD containing the footage was doctored.
Addressing a press conference here, leaders of the AAP said the party had obtained the raw footage of the sting operation from Election Commission (EC) and found no evidence of wrongdoing by any of its candidates on the tape.
Addressing the press meet, where suppressed portions from the full footage of all candidates named were shown to the media, AAP leader Yogendra Yadav said he combed through 14 hours of footage and found no evidence against party leaders. Yadav said he and a team of six volunteers went through the entire footage and concluded that it was a doctored CD.
“The party is convinced that no wrong doing has been committed by any of its candidates. The party has also prepared a CD which shows how exactly the alleged cut and paste job was done,” Yadav said.
Terming the footage as ‘manipulated’, Yadav said the important views aired by the party members were edited and deleted from the CD.
The AAP leader asked the media and press council to have better regulations before airing sting operations.
He urged the media to show AAP’s clarifications and findings as well.
The press conference by the AAP came after the controversial sting operation alleged that several party leaders, who were contacted for their help in recovery of money from individuals and getting land deals done, agreed to extend their support in return of donations in cash to AAP.
The sting was carried out by the website Media Sarkar.
The website had on Friday handed over the raw video of the operation to the Election Commission. “The video shown has been edited and shown in a way to put AAP leaders in poor light. No conclusion can be drawn on the basis of the CD shown,” Yadav said.
AAP leaders say that the sting was aimed at tarnishing AAP’s clean and corruption-free image.
The said that if any of its leaders is found guilty then he or she will be punished and will not be allowed to contest elections.
In a post on social networking site Twitter, AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal said,”Some sting ops done on our candidates. Our team, including Sanj Singh n Yog Yadav, looking into it. We will not spare if anyone is guilty (sic).”
The sting video footage showed Shazia Ilmi, AAP candidate from south Delhi’s RK Puram seat, allegedly meeting a reporter posing as a company’s representative seeking her help to teach a lesson to a rival company.
Initially, Ilmi refused to help the reporter without legal documents, but later allegedly agreed to help her even without documents when the reporter offered her donations in cash.
Apart from Ilmi, the sting operations were also done on AAP candidates from Kondli (Manoj Kumar), Sangam Vihar (Dinesh Mohaniya), Okhla (Irfan Ullah Khan), Rohtas Nagar (Mukesh Hooda), Deoli (Prakash) and Palam (Bhawna Gaur). (UNI)