The BJP today said former External Affairs minister Jaswant Singh had rebutted news reports that the US mole he had referred to in his book was scientist VS Arunachalam.

“He (Jaswant Singh) has told me that he has not identified anybody by name as a US mole,” BJP’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha

Vijay Kumar Malhotra said. Malhotra, who cited Singh’s remarks at a news conference yesterday that the American mole he had referred to in A Call to Honour was a civil servant, said Arunachalam did not hold that position as the scientific advisor to the then defence minister.

The Congress, meanwhile, said if Jaswant Singh’s claims were true ‘‘it can be assumed that Singh himself was in collusion with or even abetted’’ the leaking of official secret.

‘‘The Congress party calls upon him and the BJP to explain to the nation that if they were aware of the existence of a mole in the Prime Minister’s Office, why did they not expose it ... BJP and Singh must explain to the nation why they failed to do so,’’ party spokesperson Jayanti Natrajan said.

‘I was never in PMO’

New Delhi: V S Arunachalam, former scientific adviser to the Defence Minister, on Wednesday rubbished reports that he was the US mole in the PMO during P V Narasimha Rao’s regime. He has threatened to file a defamation suit in the wake of media reports in this connection. Arunachalam said he was then scientific adviser to the Defence Minister and was never in the PMO. ENS