NEW DELHI, Apr 20: Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today slammed the Centre over Joint Parliamentary Committee’s(JPC) draft report on 2G spectrum scam and said there was an urgent need of an independent Lokpal to investigate such cases.
The parliamentary panel probing the 2G scam has reportedly blamed former Telecom minister A Raja for spectrum allocation and gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the matter.
“All in the UPA government, including the Prime Minister and Mr Chidambaram had concurred and been complicit with Mr Raja on this.
The complicity of Mr Chidambaram is obvious from his extraordinary urgent directions to an officer of the Finance Ministry who had written to the DOT (Department of Telecom) that spectrum price must be indexed (which meant 3.5 times the 2001 prices), to retrieve and replace his letter and allow the spectrum to be given at 2001 prices,” AAP said in a statement.
It said in fact Mr Raja could not have given spectrum at 2001 prices ‘without the express consent’ of Mr Chidambaram, since the government had constituted a committee of these two persons to decide spectrum pricing.
AAP said the Prime Minister’s ‘complicity’ in what Mr Raja did was ‘obvious’ from the contemporaneous notings of the Prime Minister’s Office on this issue.
AAP alleged that the CBI too has been unable to investigate the involvement of the Prime Minister and Mr Chidambaram in the 2G scam.
It said the CBI has also been ‘pressurised’ to ‘let go of’ corporate bigwigs in the case.
“All this underlines the urgent need of an independent Lokpal to investigate such cases. But those in control of the government and Parliament realised that much of their top leadership would be in jail if that were to happen.
That is why it is being resisted tooth and nail. The ball is now in the court of the people to give them a fitting reply in the next elections,” AAP said. (UNI)
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