The government’s feeble defence in the face of the Supreme Court’s cancellation of 122 telecom licences saw an echo at the Congress party’s headquarters at 24 Akbar Road, where most party spokespersons were conspicuous by their absence.
Telecom minister Kapil Sibal appeared on a surer ground when he spoke about the road ahead for cancelled licensees, but was slippery when it came to A Raja, and the government’s own culpability in the decision to allocate rather than auction spectrum. After speaking at length about how Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and then finance minister P Chidambaram had done their best to make sure that the auction route was chosen, Sibal also reieterated that “I am in no way attacking A Raja.”
“The DMK is a valuable ally of the UPA and shall remain so, I will not attack any of my colleagues personally,” he said. When asked whether his reluctance to blame Raja for 2G irregularities was because the UPA was admitting to collective responsibility, Sibal again no. “Not at all. We followed a policy which we considered correct, set up by the NDA in 2003. Now the Court has said that the policy was per se discriminatory. We have clarity on the issue now,” he said.
As soon as the news of the SC’s order came through Sibal and minister of state in the PMO V Narayanswamy met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at 7 Race Course Road. The line, to defend the allocation as a policy imperative and to distance the government from “procedural irregularities” committed by Raja, was taken there.
The government and the party has decided to look at two silver linings in the order. One, that then finance minister P Chidambaram has been given a breather of two weeks before the CBI court decides on whether he should be made a party in the case. Secondly, the Assembly elections are on, and if the Congress wins in Punjab and Uttarakhand, and does well in Uttar Pradesh then a lot of this will be obliterated in the optical illusion of electoral success,” said a senior minister.
A meeting of senior ministers of the government, defense minister A K Antony, telecom minister Kapil Sibal and home minister P Chidambaram had been scheduled after a meeting of the Union Cabinet late in the evening on Thursday.
The opposition meanwhile was having none of the government’s sophistry on the matter. BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the government had lost all right to continue in government after the “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cannot escape the political responsibility as he is head of the government. The 2G scam is the biggest scam since Independence. The entire country was deeply agitated and shocked over it. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union ministers Kapil Sibal and P Chidambaram defended the 2G spectrum allocation inside and outside Parliament and stated there was no wrongdoing,” he said.
AIADMK leader and Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa also welcomed the Supreme Court order.