Defending Union home minister P Chidambaram on his alleged involvement in the 2G scam case, telecom minister Kapil Sibal on Saturday rejected all allegations levelled against him.
Defending Union home minister P Chidambaram on his alleged involvement in the 2G scam case, telecom minister Kapil Sibal on Saturday rejected all allegations levelled against him. “People in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) are trying to malign and defame P Chidambaram. We reject all allegations against him,” Sibal told the media here.
“Former telecom minister A Raja did not hold any meeting with Chidambaram on 2G spectrum allocation. Records show that the finance ministry had no knowledge that Letter of Intent would be issued on January 10, 2008 by the telecom ministry,” he added. No official of the finance ministry, including Chidambaram, the then finance minister, had committed any “irregularity or misconduct” in the spectrum allocation, Sibal said.
The decision to rally behind Chidambaram, sources told DNA, was taken yesterday evening at the core group meeting of the Congress at the behest of party president Sonia Gandhi. It comes in the wake of increasing clamour from the Opposition for a probe into Chidambaram’s role in the 2G scam after a trial court admitted a complaint against him.
Sibal, however, clarified that, “It was only an admission of a complaint under section 200 of the Criminal Procedure Code, under which the statement is recorded ex-parte by the magistrate.”
The complainant can also bring along witnesses whose statements shall also be recorded by the magistrate. Once that is done, the magistrate decides whether to order an inquiry or drop the procedure,” Sibal said.
Sibal not only categorically rejected all allegations against Chidambaram but also described him as a “valued colleague” who has discharged his responsibilities “without fear or favour” and with “absolute integrity and devotion.”
But it was not enough to pacify the Opposition. Reacting sharply to Sibal’s defence, the BJP reiterated its demand for a probe into Chidambaram’s role in the 2G spectrum allocation in 2007. “The BJP wants the UPA Government to determine Chidambaram’s role in the spectrum scam,” spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said. The BJP found it “strange” that the government was dealing with the Chidambaram question outside Parliament, he added, confirming the BJP’s plans to continue “boycott” the home minister for the remaining days of the winter session.
Deciding against targeting any individual in the government, the Left parties would focus their campaign on the larger issue of
corruption, CPI national secretary D Raja told DNA. “Why are others speaking for him? What is the need for Mr Sibal to talk on this?” Raja said, adding, “Is the government getting rattled?”
Chidambaram has been at the centre of a political storm ever since certain reports alleged that he had a role in ‘’deciding’’ the prices of 2G-spectrum during his earlier tenure as the finance minister. His name also cropped up in a letter of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee addressed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in which Mukherjee had blamed his predecessor for not sticking to the established procedures in auctioning of the 2G spectrum.
The letter stated that sufficient steps were not taken by Chidambaram to prevent the scam from occurring in the first place, and that he could have ‘’stuck to the stand’’ of auctioning of the precious spectrum instead of giving it at throwaway prices.
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