UPA under stress again over controversial 2G note

The 2G scam resurfaced to haunt the Government, this time through a Finance Ministry note that seemed to indicate that P. Chidambaram, who was the Finance Minister during 2008 could have prevented the shenanigans of disgraced Ex-Telecom Minister A. Raja. The top brass of the Government went into a tizzy and took a lot of pain to dismiss the relevance and importance of the note. The controversial note came to light while the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister were away in the US for the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF.



The Opposition pounded on the 2G note to sharpen its attack on the Government. Chidambaram, who is now the Home Minister, is believed to have offered his resignation but the same was rejected by both, the PM as well as Sonia Gandhi. All the top Congress leaders met each other to try and defuse the tension over the 2G note. The Prime Minister, on its way back from the US dismissed media suggestion of any rift in his Cabinet and instead accused the Opposition of trying to force the issue. The BJP of course kept the pressure on the Centre by demanding Chidambaram's resignation.

But, Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister managed to broker a truce between the Finance Minister and his predecessor. Mukherjee said that the contents of the 2G note didn't reflect his views. Both of them buried the hatchet and said for the Government the chapter on the 2G note was closed.

The 10-page note suggesting that Chidambaram could have got Raja to cancel the 2G licences was actually released by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as part of a response to a Right to Information (RTI) application not once but thrice this year. The note, drafted on March 25, by Finance Ministry official P.G.S. Rao, was first released to a Maharashtra-based RTI activist in May and subsequently to Delhi-based RTI activist Subhash Agarwal in July. BJP’s RTI specialist Vivek Garg secured the same note through another RTI application which triggered the latest controversy in the long-standing 2G saga.