New Delhi: Amid a raging controversy over his stand on the 2G spectrum allocation issue, Home Minister P Chidambaram offered to resign when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called him before leaving for New York, says a TV report.
However, Manmohan Singh is understood to have expressed full faith in Chidambaram's integrity. The PM has reportedly said that he has full faith in the home minister during both his stints as finance minister and home minister.
With Chidambaram in a tight spot after the emergence of Pranab Mukherjee’s letter to the Prime Minister's Office on 2G Spectrum auctioning, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has got fresh ammunition to demand his resignation.
With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh away in New York, the phone airwaves case rocked the government again, this time over a six-month-old note of the finance ministry that fell just short of indicting Chidambaram, sparking a war of words between the Congress and the opposition that demanded his ouster.
"I don't know what note the media is talking about, in any case the matter is before the court. As far as Mr Chidambaram is concerned, as finance minister he continued to enjoy my full confidence, as home minister he continues to enjoy my full confidence," said Manmohan Singh.
According to another report, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee have spoken to Home Minister P Chidambaram over phone amid a controversy over his stand on the allocation of 2G spectrum.
Read: A Raja has been vindicated, says DMK
"I have assured the Prime Minister that I shall not make any public statement on the subject until he returns to India," Chidambaram said in a statement on Thursday in response to queries from media about his silence on the Finance Ministry note to Prime Minister's office on 2G spectrum submitted to the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
"The Prime Minister called me last night from Frankfurt and spoke to me. The Finance Minister called me from Washington and spoke to me," said Chidambaram, who held the Finance portfolio when the Telecom Department took a decision to allot 2G licenses.
Read: CBI opposes probing Chidambaram's alleged role in 2G case
Congress president Sonia Gandhi in the meanwhile was also briefed on the matter and was expected to take it up when the prime minister returns to the capital Monday, after attending the UN General Assembly, Congress sources said.
BJP leads ‘sack P Chidambaram’ chorus
In the monsoon session of the parliament as well the party had disrupted the proceedings demanding his resignation blaming him for the 2G scam and police action against protesters.
Pointing fingers at Chidambaram, the entire Opposition demanded his ouster from the union cabinet saying he had no moral right to continue.
“It is shameful that the finance minister of a country was directly responsible for 2G spectrum allocation scam. Either Chidambaram should resign or the PM should sack him,” said senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi, who is also the chairman of public accounts committee (PAC) that probed the scam. His aborted draft report had also referred to these details.
Read: CPI(M) demands CBI probe against Chidambaram in 2G scam
Incidentally, in Chennai Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalitha too joined the “remove Chidambaram” campaign saying the CBI should proceed against him as they did against A Raja.
But even though senior BJP leaders went all out against PC, they were rather muted in their criticism of the PM’s role in the scam. Joshi blamed Chidambaram for misleading the PM and said Manmohan was kept in the dark.
Read: Subramanian Swamy moves court against Chidambaram in 2G case
“The question that arises is that since prime minister is a well-known economist, how was he misled. Was he actually misled or he chose to be misled?” said Joshi.
“There are several questions which Chidambaram has to answer in relation to the fixation of the value of the spectrum in 2008. It is not an internal matter of the government. It involves public revenue,” said Arun Jaitley, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha.
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