By IANS,
New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Thursday demanded the ouster of Home Minister P. Chidambaram and said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) should investigate his role in the 2G spectrum scam.
The opposition demands came after Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy Wednesday submitted to the Supreme Court documents indicating that Chidambaram, as the then finance minister, was involved in deciding the 2G spectrum price along with jailed former communications minister A. Raja.
The documents filed by Swamy included a communication of Jan 30, 2008, by the department of economic affairs of the finance ministry recording the gist of the meeting between the then finance minister Chidambaram and Raja.
“This clearly proves that the role of P. Chidambaram in as finance minister in the 2G scam is responsible,” BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi told reporters here.
“Either he should resign himself or he should be dismissed, I demand it strongly,” he said, adding that there should also be a CBI probe.
His colleague, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, said that the matter had been raised by the BJP earlier as well.
“…It was raised by the BJP but was not heard. It was only heard when the Supreme Court intervenes. We have raised this issue again and again,” said Rudy.
In a new twist to the second generation spectrum case, a note to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) from the finance ministry said the airwaves could have been auctioned in 2008 if Chidambaram, then the finance minister, had “stuck to his stand”.
In the note, the finance ministry says Chidambaram could have prevented spectrum from being given away at throwaway prices by insisting on its auction — alluding that presumptive losses worth thousands of crores could have thus been avoided.
The note, which was apparently shown to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and accessed by way by an application under the Right to Information Act, was prepared by a deputy secretary in the finance ministry and sent to the Prime Minister’s Office March 25.