Evidence shows Manmohan Singh failed to avoid 2G scam

A day after DNA reported that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had helped pave the way for telecom minister A Raja to perpetrate the 2G scam, evidence has emerged that the PM also failed to exercise any leadership in the murky episode.

As the prime minister, Singh is the first among equals. But documents made available to DNA show that Singh failed to act upon reams of advice sent to him by some of his senior-most cabinet colleagues. The strongest warning to Singh had come from Pranab Mukherjee just a few days before the telecom spectrum was to be allotted.

Accessed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by RTI activist and advocate Vivek Garg, the two page note, marked ‘Top Secret’, warned the PM that any change in policy must be “done in a transparent manner and then follow the stated policy both in letter and spirit.” Mukherjee, who headed the Group of Ministers (GoM) on the allocation of 2G spectrum, was quite upset that the government was not doing so.

In no uncertain terms, he told Singh that the “criteria for the grant of license may be strengthened and put in the public domain at the earliest.” But none of that happened, and a few days later, the then telecom minister A Raja would allot the spectrum, creating one of the biggest scandals of independent India.

If there was further proof of Singh’s indecisiveness, it came, ironically, from the then finance minister P Chidambaram, who did not do much to prevent the scandal, as has been revealed by the recent finance ministry note. But back then, on January 15, 2008, a detailed four-page note to the prime minister on “spectrum charges” made a powerful argument for an auction. “Spectrum is a scarce resource,” Chidambaram wrote, and “the price of spectrum should be based on its scarcity value.”    
But Singh ignored these dire warnings from his cabinet colleagues. As the 2G scam blew up in the UPA’s face and the CBI was forced to act by the Supreme Court, Singh’s leadership remained lacklustre.

A letter from east Delhi Congress MP Sandeep Dikshit to the Prime Minister is indicative of the political crisis that was brewing in the party. The letter, dated December 14, 2010, urged Singh to “take the bull by the horns” in a bid to “convince a doubting and unbelieving nation of our government’s integrity.”

Dikshit’s letter is also an eloquent admission of how bad the things were for the Congress party. “As a Government and as a Party we have been both late and lazy in putting out the real picture, which has not been put across (sic) to the nation,” he wrote. “It is now a challenge for all of us to ensure that in the few months before the Budget Session and the elections in four states, we are able to show (sic) decisive action to the people, and change this mood.”

But with the PM struggling to keep the UPA together as his cabinet colleague Raja went to jail, soon to be followed by Suresh Kalmadi for the CWG mess, things continued to spin out of control. Perhaps, had he not diluted the mandate of the GoM and rejected Dayanidhi Maran’s request to keep spectrum pricing out of its ambit, there wouldn’t have been a 2G scam.