In Rajya Sabha,Manmohan takes on Jaitley: confusing facts

Singh reminded Jaitley that some of the crucial decisions in both the cases.

Tired of facing repeated insinuations from the Opposition,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday got into an unusually combative mood in the Rajya Sabha and hit out at the Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley while rejecting his own or his offices role in the 2G scam and the Antrix-Devas agreement.

Rebutting the specific charges made by Jaitley on Wednesday,the Prime Minister blamed the Opposition leader for spreading innuendo and mispresenting facts on the issue of 2G scam. On the Antrix-Devas agreement,he said Jaitley was confusing facts.

Singh reminded Jaitley that some of the crucial decisions in both the cases 2G allocation as well as Antrix-Devas deal were taken when the party to which the honourable Leader of Opposition belongs was in power.

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On the Antrix-Devas agreement,he said,The honourable leader of Opposition has stated that this is the mother of all sweetheart deals and has spoken of figures in the range of lakhs of crores. These are confounding techniques of which the leader of the Opposition is a great master. But I should remind him that he is confusing s-band space segment capacity with terrestrial spectrum. The price he is quoting is for terrestrial spectrum.

I wish to clarify that no allocation of terrestrial spectrum has been made by the government either to Antrix or Devas. Therefore,the figures he has quoted have no basis in fact, he added.

The Prime Minister had earlier in the day made an impromptu intervention during the question hour when a query regarding the Antrix-Devas agreement was being answered by the Minister of State in the Prime Ministers Office V Narayansamy,saying neither he nor his office was aware of the deal when it was approved in 2005.

The Antrix Corporation is a commercial arm of ISRO and the Department of Space and these things dont come to the government for approval. Indirectly,since a part of the commitment (to Devas) was to provide two satellites,the decision to approve the satellite part did come to the Cabinet, he said. It did come to the Space Commission after it was put up before the Cabinet. But it was not mentioned,even in the Cabinet note,that there was a specific commitment,under this agreement between Antrix and Devas. So,there was no question of the Prime Ministers Office being asked to approve this deal. It never came to that level.

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Singh also pulled up Jaitley for criticising his handling of the economy. People talk in terms of an Indian model of growth wherever I go. It is only in our Parliament that the leader of the opposition and some other friends regard us as a purposeless,non-result-oriented government. The whole world appreciates the management of Indias economy and that is the message that comes out of all international meetings I attend.

I urge the leader of the opposition to,at least,study some of those documents,and I hope he will be educated enough as a result of those documents,not to use these harsh words that he has used… he added.