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Tara Shankar Sahay and Sheela Bhatt in New Delhi
The Samata Party on Friday mounted pressure on Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for an inquiry into tehelka.com's use of prostitutes to trap army officers in its expose on corruption in defence deals.
Senior party leader George Fernandes, who had to resign in the wake of the damning revelations made by tehelka.com, has sought an appointment with Vajpayee in his office in Parliament.
At the time filing of this report, the prime minister's office had not responded to Fernandes's request.
Samata Party MPs, meanwhile, have criticised the media's "attempt to treat the defence scam and the use of prostitutes by Tehelka in its sting operation as two different issues."
"These are not separate issues, they are one and this is what we want to convey to the prime minister," asserted Lok Sabha MP Prabhunath Singh.
"By bringing in the argument that the corruption in the defence establishment and the use of call girls by Tehelka are separate issues, an attempt is being made to obfuscate the issue," Singh said.
He contended that numerous lawyers had asserted that in a civilised society the use of prostitutes for any purpose could not be justified. "The end cannot justify the means, as the opposition is trying to prove," Singh added.
He said that as underscored by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, the government should go ahead with a probe against the Web site.
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