New Delhi, Sept 28: The Congress on Wednesday asked the main opposition party BJP not to compare disgraced former Telecom Minister A Raja with Home Minister P Chidambaram on the 2G spectrum issue.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said: “A Raja has been accused of criminality. I may clarify these are charges at the moment, and he could possibly be held guilty if the court decides. He changed dates of the GoM Meeting on 2G allocation and in a single day distributed 110 licences.
“On the other hand, Chidambaram and his Finance Ministry opposed ‘first come first served' policy. Allegation on policy is different from allegation on criminality.”
The Congress spokesperson said, a spurious distinction is sought to be made by Sushma Swaraj questioning why former ministers Arun Shourie and Jaswant Singh were questioned by CBI, and why Chidambaram was not questioned.
“It lies in the domain of the investigating agency whom to question, and whom not to question. If the investigating agency is wrong, there is the trial court and Supreme Court to overrule it. Jaswant Singh was chief of Group of Ministers and the questioning was related to the telecom structure.”
Singhvi alleged that the BJP press release on 2G scam today is “a verbatim summary of Subramanian Swamy's arguments that he has been giving in the Supreme Court for the last five days. On a matter which is sub judice, BJP is passing judgement right, left and centre.”
“This whole drama and misinformation about why A. Raja is in jail and why Chidambaram is not, is spurious. You cannot compare one with the other.”
On Sushma Swaraj's allegations against the UPA government, Singhvi said, these are nothing but “frustrated outpurings by a party which wants to grab power through ulterior motives. This smacks of hypocrisy and double standards.”
“It suits them to allege dissension in the Congress. It suits them to say that the Home Minister is sulking. This is a party (BJP) which comes with a rich history of dissensions, first between Advani and Vajpayee, and where Uma Bharati on camera is squabbling against her senior leaders. They are the ones who are now lecturing us on dissensions.”
Singhvi mde a humorous remark: “I want to offer BJP a bargain. If BJP stops telling lies about us, we will stop telling the truth about them.”
Singhvi said, BJP had been consistently trying to destabilise the UPA government since it lost power in 2004. In September, 2004, it took the help of ‘nakshatras' (constellations) to predict that the UPA government would fall, during the no-confidence motion over the nuclear deal issue, it hoped against hope that the government would fall, and it now holds the record of the highest number of stalling Parliament proceedings.”
