The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said on Wednesday that it would provide access under the Right to Information (RTI) Act to correspondence between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and then telecom minister A Raja, in connection with the 2G spectrum scam.
An RTI applicant had sought to know why the prime minister had retained Raja as telecom minister despite allegations of wrongdoing in the 2G spectrum allocation. The applicant, in an appeal to the Central Information Commission (CIC), had sought to know why the PMO had not been forthcoming over his request for information.
After the CIC ruled in favour of the applicant, media advisor to the Prime Minister Harish Khare said the applicant’s query had been couched in terms which were not clear on exactly what he had wanted. ?As the (Central Information) Commission, after consulting the applicant, has reframed the request as requiring disclosure of the aforementioned correspondence, copies of the same would be made available to the applicant in this case,? he said in a statement.
Contending that a wrong impression had gone out on the application issue, Khare said the PMO had always provided the information sought by the Right to Information applications. ?Applicants who have earlier sought copies of correspondence between Mr Raja and the prime minister have already been provided these copies by the PMO,? he said.
The CIC too had noted that the appellant had ?framed his queries in Hindi and his queries are a mix of allegations and his desire for what the nation should be?.