New Delhi, October 01: The CPI on Sunday demanded a CBI probe into the role of Home Minister P Chidambaram in the 2G spectrum licensing issue, but unlike CPI(M), did not seek his resignation.
Maintaining that the latest disclosures on the 2G scam “warrant an investigation” into Chidambaram’s role, the party said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also “cannot escape his accountability to the nation by taking offensive against the media and the Opposition and trying to find hidden hands to destabilise his Government.”
Referring to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement in the matter, the CPI Central Secretariat said his distancing himself from the note from his ministry to the Prime Minister’s Office on Chidambaram saying it did not reflect his personal views, “will not fool anybody”.
“It is interesting to note that Mukherjee does not speak anything on the contents of the letter. The issue cannot be closed with the ‘truce’ between two ministers, as this is not the internal affair of the Congress or the UPA. 2G is a national issue,” the party said.
It said Chidambaram’s role as the then Finance Minister and the omissions and commissions in spectrum licensing should be thoroughly investigated by the CBI.
The agency “cannot decide or argue that it will not investigate Chidambaram’s role” as it “does not have the right to decide whether it will investigate about a particular person or not”, the CPI said, adding that the “bankruptcy” of the ruling coalition was “getting exposed more and more with every new revelation.”
CPI(M) had yesterday demanded Chidambaram’s resignation saying there was “mounting evidence” about his “direct role and involvement” in the 2G spectrum scandal.
—-PTI—–