Home Minister and Finance Minister meet the PM
NEW DELHI: On Thursday home Minister P Chidambaram and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at his residence to formulate the strategy to fight the 2G crisis following the controversial 2G note of the Finance Ministry.
Also the two key Cabinet ministers met Congress President Sonia Gandhi for discussing the same issue.
During the meeting, the Congress President has requested Mukherjee to speak to all involved including the Law Minister and others and prepare for defending Chidambaram in court.
The Finance Minister has told Sonia Gandhi that the controversial 2G note was not leaked out by the Finance Ministry, but came out from PMO on RTI request.
Mukherjee, in a written explanation earlier, attempted a balancing act and said that the 2G note was written after inputs received from the PMO and there was no criminality on the part of Chidambaram during his tenure as the finance minister in UPA-I.
Mukherjee played down reports of rift with Chidambaram and told Sonia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the controversial 2G note was just a background paper and was in no way an indictment of the Home Minister’s role in scam.
Pranab’s written explanation categorically states that the Finance ministry note was prepared in consultation with the Prime Minister’s office and was handled by the senior-most bureaucrat in the country – the Cabinet Secretary.
The note, as Mukherjee explained, was made as a consolidated and comprehensive background note.
A meeting held on March 15 and 16 at the Cabinet Secretary’s office, was attended by secretaries in Finance, Department of Telecom, Law, Environment ministries and the Principal Secretary in the PMO.
