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President did not pull up PM: govt

The government today described as baseless and mischievous news reports that President K R Narayanan had pulled up the Atal Bihari Vajpayee caretaker regime on the implementation of the new telecom policy and said they were designed to impair relations between the head of the state and the government.

In a rejoinder to reports appearing in some dailies, the prime minister's office asserted that neither such presidential comments were received by them nor has the prime minister sent any reply to Rashtrapati Bhavan in this regard.

The reports spoke of Narayanan taking serious exception to the bail out package involving a licence fee waiver of Rs 14 billion and had demanded an explanation from the government as to how this was done without the approval of Parliament. They said a presidential communication to this effect was received by the prime minister's office on Thursday.

Reports of such nature are intended to create confusion, the release said, adding that the media should ascertain the facts before reporting sensitive matters.

UNI

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