Chidambaram could not have changed Cabinet decision: Khursheed

No vast differences between Home Minister and Pranab, he says

Law Minister Salman Khursheed has come out in defence of Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram in the 2G spectrum allocation issue, saying Mr. Chidambaram could not have changed a Cabinet decision. “...Mr. Chidambaram, even after the Cabinet decision, continued to argue for auction of the spectrum,” he said.

“Could Mr. Chidambaram alone have overturned the Cabinet decision? What was the other way for market determination once the Cabinet had decided against auction,” Mr. Khursheed told Karan Thapar in the “Devil's Advocate” programme in CNN-IBN.

Mr. Khursheed said that when there was a disagreement among a large number of ministers and one minister, or between two ministers in the context of a decision taken by the Cabinet “there is a point at which you have to say okay thus far and no further.”

“Mr. Chidambaram said whatever you have done until now based on Cabinet decision, henceforth, the additional spectrum required — it will be required — must be done on a different context,” he said.

Mr. Khursheed scoffed at claims of BJP leader Arun Jaitley that under Section 13 (i) (d) (ii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, Mr. Chidambaram was guilty of giving an unwarranted pecuniary advantage to licence allottees.

“Can you explain how this means criminal culpability...Our position, based on Planning Commission documents, was we were not there to make money. We were there to ensure there should be maximum coverage, there should be affordable telephony available to people,” he said.

Mr. Khursheed claimed that today India had the largest coverage in the world with lowest tariff. “So if that was our policy, we succeeded. Mr. Chidambaram and UPA-I is today being pilloried for successful implementation of a policy, because one of our ministers in the implementation process might have made some mistakes and the court is going to judge.”

The Minister said the 2001 decision to give spectrum at a particular price was taken by “Mr. Jaitley's government.” For further licences to be given, the decision was taken in 2003 by the NDA government.

“All we did was... we took a conscious decision, the Cabinet, not Mr. Raja, not Mr. Chidambaram, took a conscious decision to follow the 2003 Cabinet decision and continue with the first-come, first-served procedure,” he said.

Replying to a series of questions on the March 25 Finance Ministry's office memorandum, which suggested that Mr. Chidambaram could have insisted on auctioning of the 2G spectrum, Mr. Khursheed said a summary was needed and everyone had to be on board with one clear articulation and, therefore, whoever knew anything had to provide input.

Senior officials from different Ministries provided inputs but a junior official of the Finance Ministry was compiling it. “There was an inference drawn in that... it was the author's inference. It was unwarranted and, therefore, it is an orphaned inference.”

He said the inference did not reflect the views of officers from various Ministries.

When asked that Mr. Mukherjee only said the memorandum did not reflect his views but he did not say he disagreed with it, Mr. Khursheed said this was the only way one could say “these are not my views.”