Congress again on slippery ground: Now, ex-CAG makes shocking revelations against Manmohan Govt

It seems Congress' cup of woes will not get over soon. The party leadership which is already struggling with startling revelations made by former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and media advisor of former PM Sanjay Baru, seems to be heading for fresh trouble with former Comptroller and auditor general (CAG) Vinod Rai making damning disclosures that UPA functionaries wanted to tamper with the reports of Coalgate and Commonwealth scams.

What Vinod Rai said?

Ahead of launch of his book, ‘Not just an Accountant', Rai said that he was pressurised by the top brass of the UPA Government to drop certain names from his reports on Coalgate and Commonwealth Games scams. He said, "Politicians came to my home and told me not to name some people and to protect some others in connection with the CWG and coal block allocation reports." In an interview with the Times of India, Rai said UPA functionaries roped in even his colleagues to persuade him to leave out the names.

Rai who estimated a notional loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore in the 2G spectrum allocation and Rs 1.86 lakh crore in coal block allocations, said that his book will also reveal the details about what made former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take decisions that caused losses to the exchequer. "See the PM is the primus inter pares or the first among equals. He has to take the last call which sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't. It's a frank tell-all-tale, not with the intention of finding fault but at the same time indicating the fault and suggesting remedial systematic changes so that it doesn't go wrong in the future," he was quoted as saying in the report.

Congress fumes over the allegations

Reacting to the revelations made by Rai in his book, senior Congress leader Manish Tewari dared him to debate on any platform. The Congress has termed the revelations as baseless.

Rai's disclosers not new

Rai, who demitted office last year is not new who came out with such claims. Earlier, former Coal secretary PC Parakh in his book, "Crusader or Conspirator? Coalgate and Other truths" said that Manmohan Singh's authority in determining the process by which coal blocks should be allocated was undermined by former coal minister Shibu Soren and Minister of State for coal, Dasari Narayana Rao.

Earlier, former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh levelled similar allegations against Congressmen. Singh claimed that Rahul Gandhi asked his mother Sonia Gandhi not to take up the Prime Minister post in 2004, contrary to the theory that because of her (Sonia) own inner voice, she chucked the post.

Singh's former media advisor Sanjay Baru in his book,"The Accidental Prime Minister" revealed that the former PM had accepted Sonia Gandhi, as the head of the Congress, had the final say in everything. Both Baru and Parakh had broadly raised the point that Manmohan Singh was merely a rubber stamp with little political say and the real power rested with Sonia in UPA's tenure.