March 25: Trinamul MP Dinesh Trivedi today said that if he were head of the party, he would have asked colleagues accused of accepting money from a fictitious company in a purported sting to "sit at home" till they "come out clean" in a probe.

His comments, at a panel discussion hosted by industry body CII in Delhi, are the first public expression of disapproval from within Trinamul of the way party chief Mamata Banerjee has handled the controversy. She has resisted demands for a probe into the footage, made public by Narada News.

"Let's say if I were head of the party, I would have just said, 'You come out clean and tell us what it is. And till the time you are clear, you sit at home'," Trivedi was quoted as saying. "If Mamata did that, she would've swept the elections."

The tapes show images resembling 13 Trinamul politicians, including MPs and MLAs, five of whom are candidates in the Assembly polls.

Mamata, who has not questioned the contents of the footage, today repeated her stand about the purported sting being a conspiracy.

Lawyers led by a Trinamul MP this week requested Calcutta High Court not to pass any pre-poll order on petitions seeking a CBI probe because that may "prejudice the prospect of the candidates".

Trivedi, however, said the accused politicians should ask for a probe if they felt they had "not done anything". He added that the party's "top and bottom" - Mamata and the grass-root workers, respectively - were "honest".

He cited how BJP veteran L.K. Advani, after being accused in the hawala scam in 1991, "had the courage of conviction to say that 'I will not enter Parliament till my name is cleared'". Advani was later acquitted by a court.

Trivedi did not comment on the video clips' authenticity, saying the matter was sub judice. Trivedi, Sugata Bose and Moon Moon Sen had earlier wondered aloud at a meeting of Trinamul MPs last week why the party was not coming clean on the matter.

Today's comments by Trivedi underscored how Trinamul was speaking in multiple voices on the subject, betraying what sources described as "confusion".

Mamata, without mentioning the sting, told a rally today: "CPM, BJP ar Congress kutsar santras shuru korechhe (the CPM, Congress and the BJP have begun the terror of slander)."

Some others in the party have been defensive. "Even if it is assumed that we took the money, a donation and a bribe are not the same thing," law minister and Dum Dum North candidate Chandrima Bhattacharya told reporters today.

"Many people give money. If you give me money, that is not a bribe; a bribe is given for a purpose."

Party MP and advocate Kalyan Banerjee had said on Tuesday that "we have to see whether the leaders had taken the money as bribe or donation". In Siliguri yesterday, Trinamul candidate Bhaichung Bhutia too had aired the donation theory.

"The chief minister is talking about conspiracy while others are calling it a donation," scoffed Amitabha Chakraborty, Congress candidate from Shyampur, Howrah. "If it was a donation, don't they know that one has to give receipts?"

Under Election Commission rules, a party must declare any donation over Rs 20,000, with details of the donor. Besides, the money cannot be accepted in cash. The alleged sums involved in the sting are all in lakhs.

CPM state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra alluded to a police officer figuring among the accused. "Now the question is whether the SP is authorised by the ruling party to collect donations for elections!!" he tweeted.

Mamata was "trying her best to counter the charges", a Trinamul source said, "but in the absence of clear instructions on what to say, different leaders are saying different things".