Even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh started firefighting operations in order to douse the 2G fire threatening to scorch senior ministers in his government, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee despatched a four-page letter to him, detailing the events that went into drafting the controversial March 25, 2011 note on the scam.
The note said that then finance minister P Chidambaram did not do enough to prevent the scam. After a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York on sunday evening, Mukherjee returned to Delhi and despatched the letter on Tuesday itself.
?It is a four-page letter and is a narration of events leading up to the drafting of the note. The letter is very specific on the point that this was not an effort restricted to officials in the finance ministry,? said a senior source in the government.
?Instead, it was a joint effort of officials from various ministries, including the Prime Minister’s Office and the law ministry,? added the source. ?The finance minister more or less sent a backgrounder to how the note was prepared,? he said.
What is significant is the fact that the finance minister was unwilling to shoulder the blame for the note and instead says that various ministries including the PMO were also involved in the drafting of the note.
Meanwhile home minister P chidambaram, who is in the eye of the storm, met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of a lunch hosted by the latter for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Sources say that the home minister had earlier itself asked for clarifications with regard to the note.