2G note mystery Pranab offer to quit

When finance minister Pranab Mukherjee rushed down from Washington DC to New York to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on September 25, did he offer to resign?

Even as two of the senior-most cabinet ministers as well as the prime minister's office (PMO) were embroiled in the controversy surrounding a finance ministry note relating to spectrum allocation to 2G telecom operators, there is reason to believe that an exasperated Mukherjee said that he felt enough is enough and requested Singh to relieve him from the cabinet.

Official confirmation of this is unavailable.

Officially, the ministry of finance neither confirmed nor denied anything, although sources said that this was indeed the case.

Said Mukherjee: "Don't expect me to discuss with the media what transpired in my meeting with the Prime Minister." 

The finance minister is believed to have wanted to quit as he was upset over a section of the establishment's handling of the latest controversy.

However, both Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi swung into action to avoid a serious crisis that could have precipitated had events taken a different turn.

Gandhi met Mukherjee, a veteran Congressman and, by many measures, one of the most powerful and critically important ministers in the ruling UPA coalition's cabinet.

The two leaders had a 45-minute meeting during which Mukherjee is believed to have briefed Gandhi about the process behind creation of the note.

The party brass, said sources, asked Mukherjee, the leader of the ruling coalition in Lok Sabha, to concentrate on political measures to control and check any damage that could result as a consequence of the controversial 2G note.

Earlier, the finance minister had flown to New York, cutting short his stay in Washington DC, in order to specially meet the PM who was already there to attend the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

Top UPA sources claimed that Mukherjee expressed his dissatisfaction to Singh over the way a section of the top administration had dealt with the controversial background note that has now led to embarrassment for the government.

Mukherjee's meeting with the PM was followed by another meeting with national security adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, a key figure in the PMO.

After returning to New Delhi, the finance minister on Tuesday sent a letter to the PM that put on record what he verbally communicated to Singh about the process followed for preparing the background note.

The letter elaborates on how different meetings were held under the supervision of the cabinet secretariat and PMO officials.

It also points out one of Mukherjee's main area of disappointment: that the note is not a finance ministry document but a collective inter-ministerial effort.

2G scam a raja PM singh PC guilty

Former telecom minister A Raja continued to defend his actions in the 2G scam, alleging that he sought the opinion of the three highest government authorities, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then Finance Minister P Chidambaram and then Solicitor General Goolam E Vahanavati before awarding licences to private companies.

Raja’s lawyer Sushil Kumar put forth the argument in the court of special judge O P Saini on Tuesday to counter the CBI’s primary charge of conspiracy and cheating against Raja.

Kumar argued that if the three top government representatives were aware of Raja’s actions ahead of the award of 2G licences, then how could he be the only accused in the ‘conspiracy’?

Bringing the focus back on the Prime Minister, Kumar said Manmohan Singh did not make any suggestions to constitute a GoM to examine the spectrum allocation issue. “In such case, PM Singh could also be held guilty of conspiracy and dereliction of duty for not forming a GoM to examine the spectrum allocation issue,” he said.

Raja’s counsel claimed his client had written to the PM on his decisions, and that the latter should not have approved if he thought there was anything wrong with the minister’s actions. “I wrote to PM Singh on background of all my decisions... So if he saw anything wrong in these decisions, he could have sat over it,” he said.

Claiming that he had only done what was required of him as telecom minister, Raja said, “Conspiracy is hatched only within a close- door. Whatever I have done are recorded on files. There are documentary evidences available in the department of telecom (DoT) files.

“The maximum I could be held responsible for is misconduct because whatever  decision I took was in discha­rge of my official duties as telecom minister,” he said.

He further explained why the conspiracy charge is not maintainable with the available evidences on record.

Kumar told the court that Raja joined the telecom ministry in May 2007. The TRAI recommendation for ‘no cap’ on number of applicants in a telecom circle came in August 2007 based on a reference made by the DoT before Raja joined the ministry. Of the two telecom companies under the scanner, Swan had applied for licence in March 2007 while Unitech did so in September that year.

However, the CBI had clubbed all four points into a conspiracy, without explaining how they are linked, Kumar argued in court.

“The dates of decisions taken to hatch conspiracy are not matching up. All the decisions are not linked up,” he said. “In such circumstances all those who have got 2G licences should be made accused,” he added.