New Delhi, July 26
Fighting corruption charges in the 2G Spectrum allocation scam, former Telecom Minister A. Raja today continued with his attack against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, arguing that if he in his position as Telecom Minister is being held guilty of conspiracy then even the Prime Minister should be held guilty of “conspiracy” and dereliction of duty for not forming a Group of Ministers (GoM) to examine the 2G Spectrum allocation issue.

“Just because he (Prime Minister) ignored it, no GoM (Group of Ministers) was constituted. By that standard, even the Prime Minister was also in conspiracy so far as dereliction of duty is concerned. It was his (PM's) judgement that the GoM was not required,” said Raja’s counsel Sushil Kumar today before the special CBI court of O P Saini while concluding his argument opposing corruption charges against him.

Kumar further contended that the Prime Minister was superior to his client and could have easily set up a GoM if he wanted to but never felt the need to do so.

The attack came just an hour after the DMK MP alleged that he had been misquoted by the media yesterday with regard to his plea that the Prime Minister and the then Finance Minister were aware about the sale of equity by the licencees and added that he had no intention of implicating anyone but was only defending himself. “Ask media to report truthfully or go out of the court,” Raja had pleaded before the court. 

Continuing with his argument on the second day today, Kumar began with reminding the court that since the then Finance Minister (P Chidamabaram) was privy to the matter relating to dilution of equities by Swan Telecom and Unitech Wireless to foreign firms Etisalat and Telenor, he should be called in as a ‘witness’ in the case either for prosecution or defence.