Rubbishing the government's claim that there was no wrongdoing in the 2G spectrum allocation, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday asked why was A Raja forced to quit as telecom minister if the loss to the exchequer estimated at Rs.1.76 lakh crore was not true.
"If the entire argument is that there was no loss to the exchequer then why did Raja resign from the government," asked senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley.
"Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal's entire argument is fallacious. He is just playing with statistics, confusing the position. He is playing the PAC+JPC+CBI all rolled into one and contending that there is no loss as far as revenue is concerned," Jaitley told mediapersons from Guwahati where he will be attending the party's national executive meet from Saturday.
The Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha said that Sibal has "missed the basic point" as regards the scam. "When spectrum was alloted in 2008, why was it done at 2001 prices?" he asked.
Jaitley said an all-India license was taken at the cost of Rs 1,651 crore by a licensee who sold a large part of its equity to foreign investors at $2 billion.
BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad described as "reprehensible" Sibal's comments against the Comptroller and Auditor General.
"Sibal has chosen to publicly criticise and condemn a constitutional body like the CAG when the entire report of CAG is under scrutiny before the PAC where Sibal's department could have filed its explanation as per well laid out parliamentary norms," Prasad said.
He alleged that Sibal has over-reached the "entire parliamentary propriety" and charged him with breach of privilege.
"Sibal's entire comment is an attempt to justify in an overt or covert manner the inglorious corruption of Raja in the United Progressive Alliance-2 which has caused serious loss of tax payers' money in lakhs of crores," Prasad said.
The Rajya Sabha MP said the telecom minister's "belated justification" would only further expose the corruption in the UPA-II.
"Sibal is trying to shield corruption. If there is no loss whatsoever then why is Dr Manmohan Singh's government running away from a probe by Joint Parliamentary Committee. He is attacking the opposition parties for boycotting the winter session of the Parliament saying that it caused a loss of couple of hundred crore to the public exchequer. If the government had agreed to a JPC probe the Parliament could have functioned smoothly," BJP Vice President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told rediff.com.
