By IANS,
New Delhi : Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley Thursday said the finance ministry note on the role of then finance minister P. Chidambaram in the spectrum scam showed the UPA government was at war with itself.
“The UPA government is increasingly at war with(in). On the one hand there is lack of trust with people, on the other there is lack of confidence between ministers. A civil war like situation has emerged,” Jaitley said at a function organised by Delhi Study Group here.
He said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi were “mute spectators”. “The legitimacy of the government has been eroded,” he added.
Jaitley said Chidambaram, who was the finance minister when controversial 2G auctions were made in 2008, has several questions to answer about the value of the spectrum. “It is not an internal matter of the government. It involves public revenue.”
Jaitley, leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, took exception to remarks of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is in the US, that the matter relating to 2G allocation was sub-judice.
Referring to the note sent by the finance ministry in March this year which referred to decisions taken by Chidambaram, Jaitley said the matter was subjudice even then.
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.