By IANS,
New Delhi : Opposition parties Wednesday demanded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh order a probe into the finance ministry note that the 2G spectrum could have been auctioned if Home Minister P. Chidambaram, then the finance minister, had “stuck to his stand”.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here that the “allegations against Chidambaram, which were earlier raised by the opposition parties, have been now raised from within the government itself”.
“If Manmohan Singh is true to his own words, he should order a probe into the actions of Chidambaram, who was then the finance minister,” Prasad said.
He recalled that the BJP and other opposition parties had raised the issue of Chidambaram’s involvement in the 2G spectrum case.
Communist Party of India (CPI) national secretary D. Raja said that the note of the finance ministry cannot be ignored.
He said even A. Raja, the jailed former communications minister, had demanded in the court that Chidmabaram should be called as a witness.
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 (PMO) March 25.
Activist Vivek Garg had filed the RTI application in the PMO.
The note has come to light at a time when Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy submitted some documents in the Supreme Court Wednesday demonstrating what he alleges is direct involvement of Chidambaram, as the then finance minister, in spectrum pricing.
Swamy presented the documents before an apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice A.K. Ganguly that is hearing his plea for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into Chidambaram’s role in the scam.