Sack Chidambaram immediately, says BJP
2G spectrum scam: Finance ministry’s office memorandum to PMO continues to backfire
Raising the pitch of the 2G controversy, the BJP asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday to drop Home Minister P Chidambaram immediately, as the Finance Ministry’s note of March 25, 2011, ''confirmed'' that he and the jailed former telecom minister A Raja together approved all the decisions on the 2G spectrum pricing.
Attacking the prime minster for maintaining that he had full confidence in the home minister, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said here that the prime minister acted differently with Raja of the DMK, a Congress ally.
Swaraj said even the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which had filed a charge sheet against Raja and questioned former telecom ministers during the NDA rule, Arun Shourie and Jaswant Singh, was adopting double standards while dealing with Chidambaram.
The CBI, which is under the prime minister, had given a clean chit to Chidambaram without even once questioning him, Sushma Swaraj said.
She tore the government’s assertion that there was no dissentions in the Cabinet and the argument that the Finance Ministry’s note was written by a “junior bureaucrat.” That the note was seen by the finance minister meant that it was approved. “The note went from junior to senior levels and then to the minister. The cover of the letter says the finance minister has seen the note,” she said.
The BJP leader, addressing a media conference along with her counterpart in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, said if there was to be a mid-term poll “it would be for the UPA-2’s doing and not for our asking.”
Jaitley maintained that the note made it very clear that the prime minister knew everything, including the distribution of spectrum of 2007-08 at the price of 2001. He said prime minister was “living in denials” and his statement that there were no rifts in the Cabinet had no takers.
Asked why the BJP was not asking for the prime minister’s resignation, the leaders said they would do so at the appropriate time. Whether the Congress was the beneficiary of the alleged spectrum deals, they said it would be disclosed as and when they had “documentary proof.”
