By IANS,
New Delhi: Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh Saturday strongly backed P. Chidambaram in the face of Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) demand for his resignation over the finance ministry note on 2G spectrum allocation, saying the home minister was “a man of competence and integrity”.
He accused the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of targeting the home minister as he had expedited investigation in terror cases “involving people” associated with the orgainsation.
Condemning BJP leader Yashwant Sinha’s remarks that Chidambaram deserves to be in the same cell at the Tihar jail where Raja was lodged, Digvijay Singh said there is no question of charges against him.
“Chidambaram is a man of integrity, a man of competence,” he said.
The Congress leader said the BJP should “look at its own backyard” first before levelling allegations against others, “particularly when it is against an able and competent minister like Chidambaram”.
He said the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had changed the policy of allotment of telecom circles through competitive tendering introduced by the Congress government of P.V. Narasimha Rao.
“They introduced the provisions of license fee and revenue sharing. Did no loss occur due to this? The CAG has also reported on that decision and quantified the loss by change of policy. Should they also not go to Tihar Jail by the same logic?” he said.
The BJP has stepped up its attack on Chidambaram and called upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to probe his role in the 2G scam through a “fair and transparent” investigation following revelations of a March 25 finance ministry note to the PMO, which says Chidambaram could have prevented spectrum from being given away at throwaway prices by insisting on its auction, implying that presumptive losses worth thousands of crores could have thus been avoided.
The party has also demanded Chidambaram’s resignation.
Digvijay Singh had, in an newspaper article last year, termed Chidambaram as intellecutally arrogant and criticised his policies to deal with Maoists. But, he admitted later that he had been ticked off by party president Sonia Gandhi on the issue.