National Conference Party MLAs beg Omar to reconsider his decision to resign. (AP)

July 28: Questions have been raised about the sex scandal “list of suspects” which purportedly includes the name of chief minister Omar Abdullah, but the Centre is said to be miffed at the way an MLA was allowed to get a stamp of legislative authority on the “document”.

New Delhi, disturbed at what it sees was an error by Assembly authorities, scurried to control the damage but could not prevent the chief minister from tendering a “conditional resignation” to the governor in Srinagar.

Union home minister P. Chidambaram rushed to Omar’s defence, saying his name did not figure on the CBI’s list of accused.

Sources close to Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Speaker Akbar Lone said he had received a letter from the CBI, which clarifies that Omar’s name is not there on “the list of accused” and that “it was never investigated”.

The CBI’s reply came in response to a letter from Lone who had asked the investigating agency to check if Omar’s name was mentioned on the list of accused.

The Speaker told the Assembly later he would check if the allegations were “invalid or not” and promised action (against PDP legislator Muzaffar Baig, who made the charge) if there was no truth in the “list” he received.

A senior CBI official, who probed the sex scandal, was quoted by PTI as saying that a list had been circulated in 2006 by people with vested interests, possibly to target political opponents.

Officials in Delhi, however, contended that Baig, by accepting the document, had given a stamp of legislative authority on a list which, as the home ministry claimed, was not a CBI document.

“What kind of list is it, whether it has someone’s signature on it or where it originated is not known. Why should the Speaker allow it without examination,” said a home ministry official.

National Conference sources, however, came to Lone’s defence, saying he was given little time to react by Baig, who promptly named Omar after handing the Speaker the list of suspects.

“This is a list prepared by the CBI and police. Both Omar and his father are not on the list of accused but suspects. I do not know why the CBI dragged its feet after top politicians’ names popped up on it,” Baig said in the Assembly.

The sex scandal surfaced in February 2006 when the police seized a CD containing a pornographic clip of a minor girl. Questioned, the girl said two former ministers, G.A. Mir (Congress) and Raman Mattoo (Independent), BSF deputy inspector-general K.C. Padhe, deputy superintendents of police Mohammad Yousuf Mir and Mohammad Ashraf and senior IAS officer Iqbal Khanday were behind her sexual exploitation.

All the accused were granted bail by a court in Chandigarh, where the case was transferred by the Supreme Court.

Three more high-profile politicians — then transport minister Hakim Yaseen, PDP legislator Ghulam Hassan Khan and Congress MLA Yogesh Sawhni — were named by Jammu and Kashmir High Court as accused.

Last year, Congress MP Madan Lal Sharma triggered a political storm alleging that then Speaker Tara Chand and former state Congress chief Peerzada Sayeed were involved. Tara Chand is now the deputy chief minister and Peerzada holds the education portfolio.

The scam assumed such proportions that almost every second politician was rumoured to have figured on the list.