In a damaging report which indicts the functioning of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) looking into the 2G spectrum scam came down heavily on the PMO and the Cabinet Secretariat for failing to respond to the situation and taking corrective action.
However, the draft report was “rejected” by the majority in the meeting of the PAC held in Parliament on Thursday. It was held in the absence of PAC chairman M. M. Joshi.
Not sparing even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the report said the Prime Minister, wanting to keep the PMO at “arm's length” from the 2G spectrum issue, seemed to have given an “indirect green signal” to the former Telecom Minister, A. Raja, to go ahead and “execute his unfair, arbitrary and dubious designs.”
“So far as the role of the PMO is concerned, the Committee finds that despite having noted that the Communications Minister's decision is not in conformity with the Transaction of Business Rules, which provide that ‘cases in which a difference of opinion arises between two or more Ministers and a Cabinet decision is desired shall be brought before the Cabinet,' the PMO did not enforce the above [mentioned] Transaction of Business Rules to sort out the differences between the Ministries of Communications and Information Technology,” the report states, adding that the PMO either failed to see the “forebodings or was rendered a mute spectator.”
“Concerns disregarded”
The Committee was perturbed that the considered, imperative advice and genuine concerns expressed by Dr. Singh on the developments in the telecom sector in his November 2007 letter to Mr. Raja were just disregarded.
“The Prime Minister was, in fact, misled when he was informed by Mr. Raja that the issue of the auction of spectrum was considered but not recommended by either the Telecom Commission and also [or] not recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. The Minister was telling half-truth, concealing the other half, and concealing his ulterior design,” said the report.
In further criticism of the PMO, it said the Committee was not convinced of the Office's reply that it had not received any suggestion to set up an Empowered Group of Ministers from the Union Law and Justice Minister.
“The PMO was very much aware of Law Minister's suggestions, but the counter-view of the Communication Minister got an overriding preference to the Law Minister's view for some unknown reasons, and thus no effort was made by the PMO to initiate the process of constitution of the EGoM. The PMO certainly either failed to see the forebodings or was rendered a mute spectator.”
“The Committee would further like to point out that the Prime Minister's statement that revenue generation has never been a primary consideration is self-contradictory in view of his own statement in the India Telecom 2007 conference that the revenue potential to the government must not be lost sight of as governments across the globe have harnessed substantial revenue while allocating spectrum.” The PMO is required to reconcile the “two divergent views” of the Prime Minister.
