The BJP on Friday asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to clarify whether his office had sought the note from the finance ministry on the 2G spectrum issue. Reiterating its demand for the then finance minister and current home minister P. Chidambaram’s resignation, the party wondered whether Mr Chidambaram was
not being sacked as the PMO feared the “embers of the fire” may reach it. The BJP also wondered how the PM had expressed “full confidence” in Mr Chidambaram without going into the merits of the case in the wake of the new “revelations”.
The BJP alleged Mr Chidambaram’s “culpability is clear” in the case as “not taking timely action for the benefit of someone is also a crime”.
BJP chief spokesperson Ravishankar Prasad said: “At whose instance did the finance ministry prepare the note for the PMO? The country is certainly entitled to know if the PMO had asked for the note. If yes, why was there no follow-up action?” The party alleged that even in the case of former communications minister A. Raja, who is now in jail in connection with the 2G scam case, the PM had initially said twice that Mr Raja is not guilty.
The party said the government cannot get away by saying this new development (finance ministry note to the PMO) is also due to coalition politics as the “exposé” had come from the finance ministry of Mr Pranab Mukherjee, No. 2 in the Cabinet. Mr Prasad insisted that corruption in UPA-2 was not due to coalition dharma but that the “coalition dharma of UPA-2 is built around corruption”. The party also questioned the CBI’s functioning in the 2G spectrum scam probe as well as in other cases in which the UPA-2 government is in the dock. “The CBI is more than keen to take the testimony of Jaswant Singh as he had headed the GoM on telecom but is absolutely stonewalling the questioning of Chidambaram,” he said.