Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 14: BJP MP Prathap Simha, whose office had provided passes to the Parliament intruders on Wednesday, met Speaker Om Birla on Thursday and offered an explanation, sources said. Briefing the speaker, the Mysore MP said the father of one of the accused approached him for a visitor’s pass.
The father reportedly told Mr Simha that his son wanted to tour the new Parliament building. Sources said one of the accused Sagar Sharma, remained in constant communication with Mr Simha’s personal assistant (PA) and office regarding the visitor’s pass. The MP conveyed to the Lok Sabha Speaker that he possessed no additional information beyond what he had already stated.
Opposition had trained their guns on Mr Simha and is claiming that a thorough security check wasn’t done by the MP before issuing the passes. A lawmaker from Mysuru, Mr Simha has denied any connection with the accused, apart from asking the Lok Sabha Secretariat — which is supposed to screen visitors — to issue passes.
Expressing shock at the breach, several Members of Parliament said visitors have to clear five levels of security before entering the complex and that signatures from the office of an MP are needed for a pass to the visitors’ gallery. The breach took place 22 years after the attack on Parliament in 2001.
Simha won from the Mysore constituency with 43.46% of votes in 2014 and increased his vote share to 52.27% in the 2019 elections. The 42-year-old is a former journalist and is well-known for a series of columns. He also wrote a biography of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2007. The son of a farmer, the MP had earlier said he idolised PM Modi.
Meanwhile, Nilaksha Aich — a former associate of parliament security breach mastermind Lalit Jha — who received a video of the breach from him, has told reporters that he has received only one call from the Delhi Police. Jha, who is on the run, has made the video of the breach and circulated it among people he knew.
“Yes one person called me and he said he was from Delhi Police but apart from that no one has called me,” said the man from Kolkata, who runs an NGO. “If any security force wants to call me and if my help is required to solve this then I am ready to do it. If the government needs me to help I am ready to do so,” he added.
Sources say the accused — all associated with a radical social media group — first met in Chandigarh during the farmers’ protest. Nine months ago they started planning the security breach, the worst in Parliament’s history since the 2001 terror attack.
Nilaksha Aich, though, said they had met at an event at the Indian Association Hall in April. “I saw him there and he was helping out at the event. I got introduced to him there and I approached him to join our organisation as well,” he said. The police said Jha, a teacher, was a regular at the home of Nilaksha Aich. A Bhagat Singh fan, Jha reportedly used his methods to draw attention to their problems — unemployment and ethnic violence in Manipur.