2G row: 3 ministers meet Pranab to find a way out

Amid the raging row over the controversial 2G note, three ministers on Wednesday night met Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee at his residence to find a way out to end the political storm.

P K Bansal, V Narayanaswamy and Rajiv Shukla met Mukherjee after 11 pm when the finance minister drove in from his north block office. There was no official word on what transpired at the meeting. The meeting took place hours after Mukherjee wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh setting out in detail the events surrounding the controversial allocation of spectrum.

On his part, the finance minister has refrained from speaking on the issue, saying he would first hold discussions with the prime minister. "The correspondence between the prime minister and ministers, I consider, are confidential," he curtly told reporters trying to get his comment on the 2G note.

The PM-Mukherjee meeting can possibly take place only on Thursday evening or Friday since the prime minister is flying to Sikkim to visit quake-hit areas. The finance minister too is leaving for Kolkata in the next few days for the Durga Puja festivities and will be away for nearly a week.

Later, Narayanswamy told reporters that "there is nothing politically important" in the nearly 30-minute meeting. "I came to meet the Finance Minister because I meet him once or twice in a week," he said.