Khurshid’s book on 2G spectrum politics launched
FORMER Union minister and Congress leader Salman Khurshid on Thursday said the party had lost the perception battle going into the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 even though no charges had been proven against the government.
The former foreign minister was speaking at the launch of his new book Spectrum Politics: Unveiling the Defence.
He launched the book along with his former Cabinet colleague P Chidambaram, Janata Dal (United) general secretary Pavan Varma and former Telecom Regularity Authority of India chairman Rahul Khullar.
The launch was followed by a panel discussion moderated by journalist Rajdeep Sardesai.
“The perceptions were woven around two or three allegations, one pertaining to telecom and legal material shows that there was nothing wrong...if a judge
in his 1,500-page judgement did not find any criminality then we didn’t go wrong,” Khurshid said
In his 160-page book, Khurshid has cited the Justice Shivraj Patil report of 2011, the joint parliamentary committee report of 2013 and the special court verdict by judge OP Saini delivered on December 21, 2017. None of these found any criminality in the allocation of spectrum when A Raja was telecom minister.
“We have to bring back the courage of decision-making in the government,” said Chidambaram.
Varma quoted Jawaharlal Nehru: “More dangerous than corruption is the folklore of corruption.”
While the panel debated whether 2G allocation was a mere perception of a scam, the members agreed that allegations made against economic policy in retrospect would only hurt the country, as bureaucrats fearing future enquiries would refrain from taking decisions.