2G note: Pranab to meet PM in New York

Mukherjee on Thursday has refused to comment on a letter sent by his ministry to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the 2G spectrum scam,saying he cannot make any remark on the matter as it is “subjudice”.

“The matter is subjudice. I cannot make any comment on it. The whole matter is under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court of India. We cannot make any comment on any matter that is subjudice,” Mukherjee,who is attend an India-US investor forum,told reporters in Washington.

He is now scheduled to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York tomorrow before he leaves for India later in the evening.

Singh is in New York to attend the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Even though Mukherjee’s departure from Washington has been preponed by a day to accommodate for his unscheduled meeting with the Prime Minister,officials said the finance minister would fulfill all his engagements in Washington.

Instead of Sunday afternoon,he would now leave Washington for New York on Saturday evening after attending the reception of the State Bank of India,they said.

He is expected to fly to New York and stay in the same hotel as that of the Prime Minister.

Almost two months after the CBI arrested former telecom minister A Raja along with two officials for their alleged role in the 2G scam,the Ministry of Finance sent a 10-page note to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) saying that had the ministry — then under P Chidambaram — “stuck to the stand of auctioning the 4.4 MHz spectrum”,the DoT (Department of Telecom) could have cancelled the licences.

The letter,sent to Vini Mahajan,joint secretary in the PMO,on March 25,2011,is signed by the finance ministry’s deputy director (Infrastructure and Investment Division) P G S Rao. It says that “the note has been seen by the Finance Minister” (Pranab Mukherjee).

It says that in a meeting on January 30,2008,between the then ministers of finance and telecommunications (Chidambaram and Raja),it was noted by the then finance minister that he was “for now not seeking to revisit the current regimes for entry fee or revenue share”.

It adds that when the issue of pricing of new telecom licences was being decided,the then finance ministry “implicitly agreed to the imposition of same entry fee as that prevailing in 2001 for licences allotted upto December 31,2008”.

The CBI’s main charge against Raja is that he caused a huge loss to the exchequer when he decided against taking the auction route to sell 2G spectrum to companies,some of which were allegedly ineligible to get the same. One of the key points of Raja’s defence is that he had always kept

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram in the loop before taking all decisions with regard to allocation of 2G spectrum.