PM's indirect green signal to Raja's designs: PAC

Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi, April 27, 2011

A parliamentary panel's draft report on the 2G spectrum allocation has criticized Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for giving an "indirect green signal" to former IT and communication minister A Raja to execute his "unfair and dubious designs" in selling the scarce radio waves at throwaway prices.

The yet-to-be adopted Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report said Raja, who is now in jail, revealed "half truth to conceal his ulterior design".

The report doesn't hold Manmohan Singh directly responsible for the alleged losses the 2008 sale of telecom licences caused to the nation, but the prime minister however faces critcism in the explosive report that was leaked to the media a day before it is likely to the adopted by the 22-member panel.

Criticising the prime minister, the report says that the committee examined the "sequence of events (that) testifies some unfortunate ommisions".

It highlights how "strangely" the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) processed Raja's Dec 26, 2007 letter to the prime minister.

It alleges that the letter was submitted to the prime minister Jan 7, 2008, 12 days after Raja had sent it.

Four days later, the private secretary to the prime minister conveyed Manmohan Singh's "desire to take into account the developments concerning the issue of licences", it said.

This happened a day after the licences were issued Jan 10, 2008, according to the report.

On Jan 15, Manmohan Singh's private secretary wrote a note that the prime minister wants this informally shared with the department of telecom and "doesn not want a formal communication and wants PMO to be at arm's length".

"By just acknowledging the minister's letter, the PM seemed to have given his indirect green signal to go ahead with his plan and decision... The prime minister's desire to keep the PMO at arm's length indirectly helped the communication minster to go ahead and execute his unfair, arbitrary and dubious designs."

The report, full of errors and grammatical mistakes, has already triggered a full blown war between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress and DMK combine.

The term of the present PAC ends April 30 and it is alleged that BJP's Murli Manohar Joshi, who heads the panel, was hurrying to finalise the report "with malafide intension", the ruling partners said.

"It appears that he (Joshi) has a hidden agenda to destabilise the government. He should resign. The draft report seems to have been prepared in pre-determined way with biased mind and malafide intentions" Congress' K.S. Rao, who is also a panel member, said in a joint press conference with a DMK MP and other members from his party.

The report also comes down heavily on the PMO's role saying it "certainly either failed to see the foreboding or was rendered a mute spectator".

"The PMO was very much aware of the law minister's suggestions (to refer the matter to the empowered group of ministers) but the counter view of the communication minister got overriding preference to the law minister's view for some unknown reasons and thus no effort was made by the PM."

Raja, the report said "arrogantly termed the suggestions of the law minister as out of content".

Raja "audaciously informed the prime minister that the cut-off date has been fixed at Sep 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".

The assurance to Manmohan Singh that "he was not deviating from the established and existing procedures was a blatant lie as he deformed and distorted the (FCFS) first-come, first-serve policy" the report says.

It also critcises Chidambaram who was then the finance minister saying the committee was "shocked and dismayed" to note that in his note Feb 15, 2008, he acknowledged that spectrum price should be based on its scarcity value and efficiency of usage.

But Chidambaram later suggested that the matter be closed, it says.

"...the finance minister, the guardian of the public exchequer and entrusted with the principle task of mobilisation of resources for public welfare, instead of initiating stringent and swift action against all those responsible for the whopping loss to the exchequer, pleaded with the prime minister to treat the matter as closed."