Arun Shourie turns whistle blower on 2G scam

New Delhi, Feb 26: After senior BJP leader Arun Shourie aimed his guns on the flawed policies of former Telecom Minister A Raja and allegedly claimed of holding key evidence to prove that he had informed the Prime Minister of the various discrepancies in the Telecom Ministry in 2008, Shourie has turned in to a whistle blower of sorts on the 2G spectrum scam with his revelations.

After the allegations were made in the public space, the CBI summoned Shourie to its offices to probe the matter further. He said after the meeting with the CBI officials, “I pointed out to them (the CBI) the things which were to happen in accordance with Cabinet decisions never happened neither during Maran term and certainly not under Raja. And they never went back to the Cabinet for changing the decision. That is the telling point...Real issue is money was exchanged."

Shourie added fuel to the already blazing issue when he said that the Shivraj Patil Committee report was flawed and the whole exercise was a cover-up attempt by the present Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal as a last-minute face saving exercise for the UPA government. Shourie commented, “Questioning industrialists and arresting few involved in the scam is an effort to divert the attention from real issue. The CBI which has shown some courage after Supreme Court monitoring needs to find out the money trail. Who took the money, who was favoured and what were the manipulations done by the officials?"

He also suggested that Raja should reveal the extensive money trail of the 2G spectrum scam. He has also raised suspicions on the Dayanidhi Maran regime.

Shourie also lambasted Raja's first-come first-serve policy and said, “There were 167 applications for licenses pending when Raja took over. Without going into the merits of these application, Raja invited 402 fresh applications and clubbed the pending application with the fresh ones. Later, using clauses, he disqualified more than 300 applications and laid new rules with letter of intent clause which required the firm to deposit more than 1600 crores in a short span of time."

Will Shourie be able to sound the death knell for the UPA government with his revelations on the 2G scam? Will the whistle blowing Shourie cause heartburn to the ruling UPA? Only time will tell.

OneIndia News