Expressing disappointment with his compatriots and colleagues, he writes about the time he requested his successor Kapil Sibal to issue a statement on behalf of the Telecom ministry about his clarification given to the CBI.
In his biography titled 2G Saga Unfolds — intended to be the story of the 2G case — former Telecom minister A Raja has accused former prime minister Manmohan Singh of "silence" and hit out at former colleagues in UPA II. He has also accused ex-CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) Vinod Rai of having "ulterior motives" in the 2G report. The book releases today.
Expressing disappointment with his compatriots and colleagues, he writes about the time he requested his successor Kapil Sibal to issue a statement on behalf of the Telecom ministry about his clarification given to the CBI. "In fact, some (people) in the cabinet would like the Government to distance itself from explaining things in the 2G case.
Not only that but some of them are also against you," Raja quotes Sibal as having told him. "I had to finally accept that no one would come forward to speak on my behalf due to the media attention, political imbroglio and the direct monitoring by the Supreme Court," Raja writes.
He also rues desertion by staff who were either under scrutiny or left out of fear.
Castigating Rai, he writes that the sanctity of the CAG was "severely compromised" by its then head Vinod Rai and that he "clearly had ulterior motives" in "overreaching" the bounds of his constitutional function.
"He tried to foist his personal (or influenced) agenda by sensationalizing information and creating appearances of procedural lapses and financial misappropriation. His presumptive loss figure of Rs 1.76 lakh crore has been subsequently debunked but it became engraved in public memory and led to my tribulations," says the author, writing further, "It is my conviction consequent to the whole experience of the trial that there was political motivation to kill UPA-II, and Rai's was the shoulder on which the gun was placed. It is indeed sad that in spite of having so many intelligence agencies and eminent legal minds at its disposal, the UPA-II government could not sense this and only tried to use me as a shield but were still unable to escape the bullet."
Raja also expresses his anguish at Dr Manmohan Singh's alleged "silence".
"The UPA government and more so Dr Manmohan Singh's palpable silence in relation to defending my wholly justified actions, especially when the governing bodies (CVC, CBI, JPC, Supreme Court) were refusing to hear my defence, felt to me like a silencing of our nation's collective conscience," complains Raja.
The former minister also said that it was disappointing to note that the Supreme Court's case became "not only against the policies of the Government, but also against my personal conduct."
The media is not spared either. "Our country's media, for the most part, continued to remain irresponsible and sensationalise uncorroborated information," Raja rues.
The former Union Minister says in the book that his sense of victimisation was compounded by the fact "that for the first time in history, an individual (I) was hounded by various institutions (constitutional bodies) with the full force of their bureaucratic machinery."
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