Days after a former head of telecom regulator alleged that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had threatened him with “harm” if he did not cooperate with policies that led to the multi-crore 2G scam, the veteran Congress leader on Wednesday denied that he had ever used public office for his own benefit.
Here are the top 10 developments:
| 1 | Hours after slamming the NDA government, Dr. Singh met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. |
| 2 | The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday branded the former Prime Minister a “puppet” and accused him of “lying with a straight face” after he charged the Modi government of harping on the issue of "corruption" during UPA era to divert people’s attention. |
| 3 | Mounting a counter-attack on Manmohan Singh, BJP president Amit Shah said: “Debate is not over simply because you [Dr. Singh] do not yourself engage in corruption. A Prime Minister is expected to provide corruption-free governance." |
| 4 | BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said Dr. Singh had broken his silence after being “exposed” by “books after books”, “facts after facts” and not only by agencies like CAG and CBI but also by “his own bureaucrats”. |
| 5 | “I can say in all humility that I’ve not used my public office to enrich myself, enrich my family or to enrich my friends," Dr. Singh said while addressing the national convention of the National Students’ Union of India in Delhi on Wednesday. |
| 6 | The NDA government, the former PM said, was harping on the issue of "corruption" in the UPA era because it wanted to divert people's attention to non-issues. |
| 7 | Refuting the Modi government’s claims, Dr. Singh said there was a 'fragileness' in economic recovery under the NDA government. "We had launched many new programmes, new schemes. We had put in place many new policies. This had led to profound social transformation and unprecedented economic growth as well," he said. |
| 8 | Earlier, former TRAI Chairman Pradip Baijal had alleged that Dr. Singh had warned him of harm if he did not cooperate on 2G telecom licenses. |
| 9 | “They [CBI] had warned me in each case that I would be harmed if I didn’t cooperate. Incidentally, this was exactly what the eminent economist Prime Minister had told me would happen if I did not cooperate in their scheme of things in the 2G case,” Mr. Baijal wrote. |
| 10 | This is the third book in last more than a year that has come to haunt Dr. Singh and his government about state of affairs during his regime. |
