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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | India Leader Offers to Testify in Scandal Inquiry by Jim Yardley

India Leader Offers to Testify in Scandal Inquiry by Jim Yardley

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published Published on Dec 21, 2010   modified Modified on Dec 21, 2010

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered Monday to appear before a committee investigating a telecommunications scandal that has rocked India’s political establishment. He rejected claims by opposition parties that he had been trying to avoid any questioning.

“I wish to state categorically that I have nothing to hide from the public at large,” Mr. Singh said on the final day of a plenary session of the Indian National Congress Party. “As proof of my bona fides,” he said, he would appear before a government committee examining the scandal “if it chooses to ask me to do so.”

The scandal has become a political crisis for the coalition government led by the Congress Party. Last week, the Supreme Court announced that it would monitor an investigation into the scandal by the leading law enforcement agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation. In recent days, the bureau’s officers have conducted raids across the country, and government agents are investigating allegations of money laundering and tax evasion.

The scandal centers on the 2008 allocation of cellphone spectrum — the electromagnetic waves required to carry cellphone service — to private operators. Investigators are examining whether the telecommunications minister, who has since resigned, favored certain applicants and whether bribes and fiscal improprieties took place.

A report by the government’s auditor general found many irregularities and concluded that the telecom ministry had sold the spectrum at deflated prices that cost the treasury as much as $39 billion. Many analysts say that estimate is probably too high.

Mr. Singh has not been accused of any wrongdoing or involvement in the spectrum allocation. But leaders with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., have focused on the government’s refusal to call a special parliamentary committee of leaders from all parties to investigate the scandal. B.J.P. leaders say Mr. Singh is trying to avoid questioning from such a committee about whether his office failed to investigate complaints about corruption in the telecom ministry.

In protest, opposition leaders effectively blocked normal business during the recently completed winter session of Parliament. On Monday, B.J.P. leaders responded to Mr. Singh’s speech by accusing the Congress Party of operating with a siege mentality.

“It is a matter of national concern when the prime minister is pushed to a situation where he has to say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ ” said Arun Jaitley, the B.J.P. leader in Parliament’s upper house.

Mr. Singh and other Congress Party leaders have argued that a special parliamentary committee would only create a political witch hunt and noted that, in addition to the tax and criminal investigations, a permanent parliamentary committee is already looking into the auditor general’s report. Mr. Singh is offering to appear before this committee.

“I have tried to serve my country to the best of my ability,” Mr. Singh said Monday. He said he was offering to appear before the existing committee because “I sincerely believe that like Caesar’s wife, the prime minister should be above suspicion.”

On Sunday, the Congress Party president, Sonia Gandhi, tried to take the offensive on the corruption issue by accusing the B.J.P. of hypocrisy and outlining a proposal to fight official graft. Mrs. Gandhi called for fast-tracking legal cases involving official corruption; ensuring transparency in public procurement contracts; reining in the discretionary powers of political leaders, especially in allocating land; and instituting an open, competitive system for allocating natural resources.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

The Economic Times, 20 December, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/world/asia/21india.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=India&st=cse


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