GUWAHATI: The Congress on Sunday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai tender an unconditional apology to the nation for their "sinister role" in an alleged conspiracy to bring down Manmohan Singh-headed the UPA-II government using the purported 2G spectrum scam.
A conspiracy to destabilise the government has been exposed with Rai's recent apology to Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam for wrongly naming him as one of the MPs who had pressured him not to name Singh in the CAG report on 2G spectrum allocation, Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh claimed.
"The criminal conspiracy to bring down the UPA government is thus writ large. The nation must know that truth has been vindicated...The BJP had conspired to malign our government and Vinod Rai was a party to it."
"Let Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vinod Rai and all others tender an unconditional apology to the nation and admit to their sinister role (in the conspiracy)," Vallabh told a press conference here.
Rai had recently tendered an unconditional apology to Nirupam in response to a defamation case filed by the latter following his claim that the Nirupam was one of the lawmakers who sought to pressure him to keep then PM Manmohan Singh's name out of the government's audit report on 2G spectrum auctions.
Nirupam had filed the defamation case against Rai after the former CAG in his book in 2014 made the allegation against him and repeated it in interviews to the media.
Vallabh asserted that the loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer in the grant of 2G spectrum licenses during the UPA regime was a 'presumptive' number put forth by Rai, which was not backed by any evidence.
The Congress leader alleged that the BJP, the RSS, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal and several others latched on to this "vicious and malicious campaign" with an aim to somehow install a saffron party government led by Narendra Modi into power.
"The then Director General, Audit, P&T (Post and Telecommunications) in the CAG, RP Singh, who was the principal 2G spectrum auditor, told the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G spectrum that no loss had been caused to the exchequer. When he had forwarded his findings to the CAG headquarters, he was taken off the audit and the findings were changed," Vallabh said.
The Congress leader pointed that after the Modi-led government came to power at the Centre, Rai was appointed as the chairman of the Banking Recruitment Board.