Author: Anil Sharma
Publication: Daily News & Analysis
Date: September 27, 2011
URL: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_note-that-upa-ii-has-a-problem_1592037-all
Today is an important day for the scam-hit
UPA-II, especially the Congress. The finance ministry's note questioning P
Chidambaram's role in the 2G spectrum allocation has brought to the fore differences
between and ambitions of the party's top two veteran leaders.
The war between finance minister Pranab Mukherjee
and home minister Chidambaram, following Subramanian Swamy's "expose"
of a letter, purportedly written by Mukherjee to prime minister Manmohan Singh
in March 2011, has placed the government in a bind. The letter suggested that
Chidambaram, as the finance minister in 2008, could have prevented the 2G
scam if he had insisted on auctioning the spectrum.
Matters will become clear after Singh returns
to the country as both the ministers have indicated that they would speak
to the media only after talking with the prime minister.
Also, the Supreme Court will resume hearing
Swamy's plea in the 2G case on Tuesday. Swamy is expected to argue his case
in court around two in the afternoon. The controversial Janata Party president
said late on Monday night that he was confident of a progress in the case
as nobody had contested the documents, including the politically damaging
finance ministry note, he had filed in court.
The note, picked up by the media and the opposition,
has cast a shadow on Chidambaram and the UPA-II government.
Mukherjee who was in Washington to attend
the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Bank, met Singh in New York on Sunday while opposition parties in the country
kept demanding Chidambaram's resignation or a CBI inquiry into his role.
Though he chose not to say anything specific
in the US, once he returned to the country on Monday, Mukherjee told reporters
that he would hold a "full-fledged press conference" once the prime
minister returns and the party has held a meeting. While the veteran crisis
manager kept stressing that Chidambaram was a "valuable colleague"
and "a pillar of strength", the man in the dock, Chidambaram himself,
remained tight-lipped.
On Monday evening, he met Congress president
Sonia Gandhi briefly, but chose not to speak to reporters. Soon after he left
10 Janpath, Mukherjee arrived. He was in a closed door meeting with Gandhi
for little over an hour. Though it is not clear what transpired at the meeting,
the fact that Gandhi, who is recuperating after a surgery in the US, had to
intervene in the clash of the titans speaks volumes about the current mess
that the UPA II, especially the Congress, finds itself in.
Though TV news channels tried to decipher
the goings-on and gauge the extent of damage, top Congress leaders came out
in support of both Chidambaram and Mukherjee. Union law minister Salman Khurshid
said the "matter was not so big" as it had been projected by the
media. He said Mukherjee had not written the note and that a lower-level official
had prepared it. Khurshid even advised the media to "look for something
else" because there was nothing in the 2G note.
Party spokesperson Rashid Alvi criticised
the BJP for its observation that the right place for Chidambaram was the Tihar
jail. "The BJP is acting like the applicant, the prosecutor and the judge…
all rolled into one," he said.
After a couple of TV channels started flashing
that Chidambaram had offered to resign when he met Sonia Gandhi, Congress
leaders denied any such development. Late in the night, Chidambaram found
support from unlikely quarters - the DMK. Party patriarch M Karunanidhi, who
till now has dropped enough hints that he is upset with the Congress in connection
with the arrests of his daughter Kanimozhi and former telecom minister A Raja
in the 2G scam, came out in his support.
