Congress Lambasts PM Modi, Ex-CAG Vinod Rai. Demands Apology For ‘Conspiracy’ To Oust UPA-II Regime

“Let Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vinod Rai and all others tender an unconditional apology to the nation and admit to their sinister role,” Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said.

Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh.

New Delhi: Launching a vitriolic attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai, the Congress on Sunday demanded that the duo tender an unconditional apology to the nation for their “sinister role” in an alleged conspiracy to bring down Dr Manmohan Singh-led UPA-II regime using the purported 2G spectrum scam.

“Let Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vinod Rai and all others tender an unconditional apology to the nation and admit to their sinister role,” Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said.

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Vallabh said that a conspiracy to destabilise the government has been exposed with Rai’s recent apology to party leader Sanjay Nirupam for wrongly naming him as one of the MPs, who had pressured him not to name Dr Singh in the CAG report on 2G spectrum allocation.

The Congress spokesperson alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had conspired to malign the UPA government and Vinod Rai was a party to it.

“The criminal conspiracy to bring down the UPA government is thus writ large. The nation must know that truth has been vindicated,” Vallabh told a press conference in Guwahati, PTI reported.

Stating 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 the former CAG, Vallabh said that this was not backed by any evidence.

He also alleged that the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo Arvind Kejriwal besides several others latched on to this “vicious and malicious campaign” with the motive to somehow install a saffron party government into power.

The Congress spokesperson said the then Director General, Audit, P&T (Post and Telecommunications) in the CAG, R.P. 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.

Vallabh alleged that R.P. Singh was taken off the audit when he had forwarded his findings to the CAG headquarters and the findings were changed.

The former CAG had recently tendered an unconditional apology to Nirupam in response to a defamation case filed by the latter following his claim that the Congress leader was one of the MPs, who sought to pressure him to keep then prime minister Dr Singh’s name out of the government's audit report on 2G spectrum auctions.

Nirupam had filed the defamation case against the former CAG after the latter made the allegation against him in his book in 2014 and repeated it in media interviews.