My Scribles

Senior BJP leader Yashwant Sigh has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to appear before the Joint Parliamentary Committee probing the 2G scam to “clear your name” following allegations levelled against him. In a letter to Dr. Singh, Mr. Sinha cited the recent communication of the former Telecom Minister, A. Raja, in which he had claimed that all the decisions he took were with the consent of the Prime Minister and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and said any hesitation by Dr. Singh to appear before the JPC would prove that he had “something to hide.” The former Finance Minister pointed out that when the Public Accounts Committee was examining the CAG report on the 2G scam, Dr. Singh had publicly offered to appear before it to enable the PAC reach the “right conclusions.” “You have not made a similar offer to the JPC despite the fact that many members of the JPC have publicly demanded that you appear before it. I think it is in your own interest to appear before the JPC and clear yo...

NEW DELHI: Former telecom minister A Raja on Monday defended himself against corruption charges in the 2G scam, saying he had not done anything wrong and was merely following the policies pursued by his predecessors and the NDA government. Raja said that the sale of equity by Swan and Unitech to foreign companies was to attract FDI, nothing wrong as per corporate law. Dragging the Prime Minister into the 2G mess, Raja claimed that the finance minister had said that the sale of equity is not illegal adding that he said this in presence of PM and let the PM deny it. The 47-year-old DMK MP pleaded before Special CBI Judge OP Saini that there was nothing wrong in his decision of not auctioning 2G spectrum as he had "implemented only what I have inherited." Senior advocate Sushil Kumar, appearing for Raja, said if Raja is being prosecuted for following a certain policy then all Telecom ministers since 1993 are liable to be prosecuted as they too followed the same policy. "If ...