Congress, BJP spar over ex-CAG's allegations

Former CAG Vinod Rai's remarks on the role of former prime minister Manmohan Singh in the 2G and coal block allocation led to a verbal brawl between the BJP and the Congress with the ruling party terming the charges "serious" while the latter accused Rai of a "publicity stunt".

Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said that the charges are now revealing the real picture and proving that Manmohan Singh did not have any power in his hands.

"It is the responsibility of the (then) prime minister (Manmohan Singh)... So many back to back corruption cases happen and he said that I don't know anything. This cannot be the case and the charge is serious," he said.

"Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not have power in his hands, this is true. Power was with 10 Janpath. And that is why the picture that has emerged today is correct," he said.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi contested the allegations, saying Rai was merely seeking publicity for his yet-to-be-released book.

"The disease of book promotion with attendant marketing and publicity is assuming the proportions of an epidemic. It seems that we need a new antibiotic for this viral," he told the media here.

He said that Rai was repeating allegations that had already been rejected by the Supreme Court and the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court.

"Rai has already spoken through the reports of the CAG office earlier, not once but many times. These reports have already received wide publicity while he was in office but perhaps the hunger for publicity was not sufficiently satiated.

"It is very important to remember that similar, indeed identical, allegations were made about prime ministerial awareness and complicity. They were made by applications both to the special judge and the Supreme Court.

"There was also big issue about issuing notices to the then prime minister (Manmohan Singh). Now what is important is that all those attempts were rejected both by the Supreme Court and by the special CBI court," Singhvi said.

While Javdekar lauded Rai as a "successful" Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) who "brought to the fore irregularities that were going on", Singhvi said he had been suffering from selective amnesia and was not critical of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Singhvi said Rai is excluding recent "damning reports" of the CAG Gujarat's office about then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's government in his interviews.

He further alleged that Rai was keeping the option of joining politics open.

"Denials by Rai about joining politics have been somewhat ambiguous and his words suggest that he is keeping all his options open. It would have been better had be first joined politics and then made these subjective opinion," Singhvi said.

Rai, ahead of the release of his book "Not Just An Accountant", has said Manmohan Singh "chose not to stop" the problems in the telecom sector and claimed that Congress leaders had sought to pressurise him to keep out PM's name from the audit report brought out by his office.