“My beloved leader Dr Kalaignar advised me to resign to avoid embarrassment to the government and parliament. My conscience is clear and I will prove my actions right,” Raja said.
Despite resigning as Union telecom minister, Andimuthu Raja remained defiant late on Sunday night and said he had not done anything wrong. Instead, he claimed credit for “revolutionising” the telecom sector.
“My beloved leader Dr Kalaignar advised me to resign to avoid embarrassment to the government and parliament. My conscience is clear and I will prove my actions right,” Raja told reporters soon after meeting prime minister Manmohan Singh at 11 pm.
DMK sources said the party still backed the beleaguered former telecom minister. “Kalaignar convinced Raja to resign, but at the same time assured him that the party stood by him,” they said.
Opposition AIADMK, which has been baying for Raja’s blood for long, reacted with cautious optimism.
With Jayalalithaa away at her Kodanad Estate in Ooty, party sources welcomed Raja’s decision but wanted more action on the spectrum scam.
“The resignation of Raja should not be the end of the spectrum scam. The government should initiate action and punish all those who caused a huge loss to the exchequer,” the sources said.
Raja, however, said he changed tele-density of the nation. “When I took over, the total number of telephone connections was 300 million. It has now increased to 729 million,” he claimed.
“I have done a service to the nation, to the government and to my party. All-India call charge was Rs1.60 earlier. It has now come down to 40 paise, while the intra-circle rate is 25 paise,” Raja said, implying that his action of allotting 2G spectrum had resulted in drastic reduction in call rates.
Now that Raja has resigned, it is not clear whether the opposition will insist on setting up a joint parliamentary committee (JPC). It is also not clear whether the government will insist on a JPC to look into the entire gamut of the spectrum policy since 1994.
After getting the government to make Raja resign, the opposition would find it difficult to oppose any government move to hold a detailed inquiry into the spectrum scams.
An indication to the bitter battle was available when the telecom ministry said only 12.6 Mhz of additional spectrum was given by A Raja, but his move to seek additional revenue from them was challenged by service providers.
The ministry released a document saying that Raja's predecessors (Dayanidhi Maran, Arun Shourie and late Pramod Mahajan) distributed 65.2 Mhz without any upfront charge and without auctioning radio waves.
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