The controversial 2G note, dated March 25, 2011, sent by India’s Finance Ministry to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is again in news with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Tuesday clarifying that the note was prepared at the behest of the PMO.
“The finance minister had put on record that the note was sent since some official from the Prime Minister’s Office kept insisting for it,” a senior official in the Finance Ministry was quoted as saying by India’s The Economic Times.
“The prime minister was also told that neither he (finance minister) nor his ministry had dispatched the note on their own,” the official further told the newspaper.
Mukherjee, in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on September 26, 2011 stated that the Department of Economic Affairs was not in favor of sending the note after its finalization through a formal office memorandum. But the Joint Secretary in the PMO kept insisting for the note and so the communication was sent through a formal office memorandum, Mukherjee wrote.
The note, marked secret, casts doubts over the role of then finance minister and current home minister P Chidambaram in former Telecom Minister A Raja’s decision to allocate spectrum without public auction.
Mukherjee also stated in his letter that the sentence, which points at the role of P Chidambaram, was revised and put in the note “after consultations with the Caibnet Secretariat and the PMO”.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress party president Sonia Gandhi Tuesday over the current controversy.
