File pic: Vinod Rai, former Comptroller and Auditor General
"Am I a fool to influence a report after it is out?" - a Congress leader today asked as he confronted allegations that he and other leaders had pressured former national auditor Vinod Rai to keep former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's name out of reports on spectrum and coal block allocation.
Mr Rai, who was Comptroller and Auditor General during the Congress-led UPA's regime, had alleged that three Congress leaders, Sanjay Nirupam, Sandeep Dikshit and Ashwani Kumar, made what he called a "futile attempt" at keeping Dr Singh's name out of his damning reports.
Mr Dikshit, a former Congress MP, said the report was made public in 2010 and he became a member of the Public Accounts Committee after that. "So how can we influence a report I cannot understand. Either he thinks that Sanjay and I are such big fools that we will tell him to change a report that every child of India knows, or his memory is weak and if this is the case, he is confusing us with others then it is fine," he said scathingly.
The Congress leaders said they would take legal action if Mr Rai did not withdraw his comments.
Mr Rai's estimates of massive losses taken by the government in allotting precious 2G spectrum and coal blocks out of turn, without auction, to private companies left the Congress-led UPA government struggling with allegations of corruption till it lost power in May.
Manmohan Singh has been singled out for stinging criticism by Mr Rai in his soon-to-be-released book "Not Just an Accountant".
"Mr Prime Minister, people wonder, if you were indeed convinced that spectrum allocation should be transparent, what prevented you from executing your wishes? Had you, in fact, stood steadfastly by your beliefs, the fate of UPA-II might have been different. In fact, the fate of the Indian economy itself might have been very different," Mr Rai writes.
The former auditor's assertions have been seized by the BJP.
"The former PM was in office but not in power. He cannot claim ignorance now. He allowed corruption on his watch," Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said.