A Raja to slug it out despite attacks

Fending off a concerted attack by the opposition on telecom minister A Raja, the Union government stood by him firmly on Friday and said that the negative report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) was not an ‘indictment’.

Raja, who was stoutly backed by DMK chief M Karunanidhi, also made it clear that he won’t resign “since everything was done according to the law’’.

The Congress, according to sources, may take a final call on the issue during the party’s core committee meeting over the next two days. It will also wait for the outcome of the Supreme Court  (SC) hearing on the issue scheduled for Monday. For now, it has decided to defend him in the 2G spectrum allocation scam. The CAG had computed losses from the arbitrary allocation of spectrum in 2008 at over Rs1,76,000 crore.

Law minister Veerappa Moily sought to explain the statutory status of the CAG report, stating: “You cannot call it an indictment. It is not a final report.” He added that the report had “weightage” as it was prepared by a constitutional body. The report is actually a query raised by the institution on a particular ministry, the minister stressed.

He said the CAG had raised similar queries when the late Pramod Mahajan was communications minister. “The NDA did not volunteer to make him resign,” Moily said.

Making a rare appearance in Chennai, Tamil Nadu CM M Karunanidhi said Raja had done nothing wrong and there was no need for him to quit. “He only went by the rules…  No auction (of spectrum) was made during the tenure of Mahajan and Arun Shourie.

"They followed the first-come, first-served policy. The same method was adopted in the allotment of 2G spectrum,” he said.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh, said the Congress’s ties with the DMK will continue.

Raja himself launched a counter-offensive, bolstered by the fact that the affidavit submitted by the government in the SC gives an indication that there was no direction from any quarter to Raja to change the spectrum allocation policy.   

He was only told to be transparent and advised to take the matter to the group of ministers. He decided not to do to since there was no inter-ministerial issue involved.

``The question (of resignation) does not arise at all. We will prove that everything has been done according to the law,” he told reporters. The DMK minister maintained that he will not comment on the spectrum allocation issue as it is “sub-judice” and said the affidavit submitted by the telecom department “says it all”.

The BJP, meanwhile, shifted gears to launch a direct attack on prime minister Manmohan Singh. BJP spokesman Prakash Javdekar sought an explanation from Singh on his role in approving the controversial 2G spectrum allocations, as claimed by Raja in his press statements.

However, it is also not likely to intensify its demand, pending the apex court hearing. The tone of senior BJP leader MM Joshi, who hosted a Diwali party at his residence on Friday, was not aggressive.

He said he was willing to probe the 2G spectrum case as chairman of the public accounts committee, “but the report is yet to come to me.”

(With PTI inputs)