PAC on 2G scandal guns for PMO

The PAC’s draft report lashed out at then Finance Minister P Chidambaram for recommending to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to “treat the matter as closed” instead of taking against those responsible for massive loss to the exchequer.

The 276-page report, circulated to PAC members on Wednesday, has already kicked up a controversy as its members belonging to the Congress and the DMK attacked panel Chairman and veteran BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi, calling for his resignation and describing it as predetermined and done with malafide intentions. Thursday’s meeting, convened by Joshi, is likely to be a stormy affair.

While pinning the blame on former telecom minister A Raja for the scam, the report pointed to the prime minister for keeping his own office at “arm's length” on the 2G spectrum allocation issue which helped Raja “to execute his unfair, arbitrary and dubious designs”. The report says that Singh, wanting to keep the PMO at “arm’s length”, on January 3, 2008 seemed to have given an “indirect green signal” to Raja to go ahead and “execute his unfair, arbitrary and dubious designs”.

The controversial distribution of licences and spectrum was taken by the DMK representative in the Cabinet on January 10, 2008.

The CAG had estimated that this caused a presumptive revenue loss of over Rs 1.76 lakh crore.Making some caustic remarks on the functioning of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the PAC report said it “certainly either failed to see the forebodings or was rendered a mute spectator”.

The committee said it was highly perturbed to note that the considered and imperative advice given by the prime minister and genuine concerns expressed by him on the developments in the telecom sector in his November 2007 letter to Raja was “just disregarded” by the minister.

‘PM misled’
“The prime minister was, in fact, misled when he was informed by the minister (Raja) that the issue of auction of spectrum was considered but not recommended by the Telecom Commission and also not recommended by TRAI. The minister was saying half truth, concealing the other half, concealing his ulterior design,” the report said.

In its criticism of the Prime Minister’s Office, the report said the Prime Minister’s Office’s reply that no suggestion of the law minister to set up an Empowered Group of Ministers was received by them did not convince the committee.

“...The PMO was very much aware of (the) law minister’s suggestions but the counter view of the communications minister got overriding preference to the law minister’s view for some unknown reasons and thus no effort was made by the PMO to initiate the process of constitution of the EGoM. The Prime Minister’s Office certainly either failed to see the forebodings or was rendered a mute spectator,” the report said.

Not only that, Raja “arrogantly” termed the suggestions of the law minister to refer the spectrum-related matter to (the) EGoM as “out of context”. He audaciously informed the prime minister that the cut-off date (for spectrum allocation)?had been fixed for September 25, 2007, on the plea of shortage of spectrum whereas on another occasion he had said that there was enough scope for allotment of spectrum to few new operators.

“His (Raja) assurance to the prime minister that he was not deviating from the established and existing procedures was a blatant lie as he deformed and distorted the first-come, first-serve (FCFS) policy,” the draft report said.