JOIN USManmohan Singh has once again become the target of retired bureaucrats with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) ex-chairman Pradip Baijal saying that the former prime minister “warned” him of harm if he did not cooperate on 2G telecom licences.
Baijal made the damning allegation in his self-published book “The Complete Story of Indian Reforms: 2G, Power and Private Enterprise—A Practitioner's Diary”, prompting NDA ministers to target the Congress, saying the revelation makes it clear that the UPA was a “coalition in corruption”.
The Congress retorted with a claim that the Narendra Modi government was using the CBI to go after Baijal so as to make him level such allegations. Baijal's comments are the harshest in comparison with the unflattering assessments made in books by Singh's former media advisor Sanjaya Baru, former coal secretary P C Parakh and ex-CAG Vinod Rai. All these officers had worked with Singh at one point of time or another during his 10 years as prime minister.
“They (the CBI) had warned me in each case that I would be harmed if I didn't cooperate. Incidentally, this was exactly what the eminent economist prime minister had told me would happen if I did not cooperate in their scheme of things in the 2G case,” Baijal has written, in an apparent reference to the 2G case and disinvestment issues.
Baijal, who faced probe in these, also claimed the CBI wanted him to “implicate” Arun Shourie and Ratan Tata in the case.
He claimed his recommendation on a unified licensing regime led to “many problems” and “adverse inference” against him.