In the season of scams for UPA-II, which has left the government in deeply troubled waters and fingers being pointed even at the PMO, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has decided to hold a press conference in the capital on Wednesday. He will be addressing editors belonging to the electronic media and undoubtedly be hoping to clear the air on the various scams it has found itself embroiled into.
The meet will be held at the PM’s 7, Race Course Road residence at 11 am and is to be broadcast live by Doordarshan. While the PM had met editors from the print media some months ago and fielded a range of questions from them, Wednesday’s interaction assumes greater significance given the scam charges surrounding it.
These range from the Commonwealth Games, the Adarsh housing society scam to the 2G spectrum allocation scam and the most recent one, the S-band allocation scam which has recently hit the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).
Indeed, in the case of the 2G spectrum scam, which has seen the DMK’s A.Raja losing his Cabinet berth and now facing a CBI probe after being put under arrest, the Supreme Court had questioned the PM’s “silence” and “inaction” with regard to a complaint by Janata Party president Subramaniam Swamy on the 2G scam issue.