New Delhi: Days after his acquittal in the 2G spectrum scam case, former Telecom Minister A Raja has attacked former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the then Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai in his upcoming book, 2G Saga Unfolds.
In the book, which was accessed by CNN-News18, Raja claims that Singh was repeatedly misinformed by his advisors and despite approving Raja’s telecom policy, chose to remain a passive observer even when the DMK leader was arrested and jailed for 15 months.
Singh’s silence was like “silencing of our nation’s collective conscience,” Raja claims.
Raja in his book also implies that telecom lobbies had influence over the PMO.
However, his choicest criticisms were reserved for Rai, who he says behaved like “a cat that shuts its eyes and then declares the universe is dark.”
“It is my conviction consequent to the whole experience of the trial that there was political motivation to kill UPA-II and Rai’s was the shoulder on which the gun was placed,” he says.
Rai’s report, Raja says, was “a mixture of inappropriate legal interpretations, incongruous comparisons and flippant allegations.”
“Rai was the ‘sutradhaar’ who created the devious apparitionHis report is mere trash, which is unanimously deemed fit for the dustbin and his statements would not have stood test of cross-examination,” Raja alleges in the tell-all book.
Raja claims that as the telecom minister in UPA II, he fought against telecom lobbies to draft a just spectrum auction policy. But then one day he received a letter from the PMO, as the policy draft was in its final stages. The contents of that letter matched the business interests of the lobbies, he says in the book.
“This makes me wonder whether this letter was indeed drafted by the PMOIt is still a puzzle to me as to what could have prompted the PM to send that letter to meWith all due respect, I am of the opinion that such a letter bearing the PM’s signature should never have been sent,” he says.
