I may have been soft: Manmohan Singh

New Delhi, Jun 30: "My conscience is quite clear. But it is quite possible that I may have been soft," this is what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday, Jun 29 while replying to questions on corruption, including 2G spectrum allocation controversy over which he had been assured by the then Telecom Minister A Raja that "transparency, fairness and objectivity" would be observed.

"If a cabinet colleague gives that sort of assurance, I cannot sit on judgement. Only later, some people came to CVC and gave some material which was then passed on to CBI," Singh said during an interaction with a group of editors here.

It was pointed out to Singh that there was a feeling that he allowed such things to happen and therefore got the blame although his personal integrity is unquestioned.

He responded "if a cabinet colleague tells me that he will scrupulously abide by norms and ethics of transparency, I will not conduct a post-mortem. I am not an expert on telecom."

Asked whether he should have been more assertive with coalition partners, the Prime Minister said "in hindsight ''yes'' and also ''no''.

He said "some of the things that had happened happened without our getting full picture."

PTI