Drop Raja from cabinet immediately: CPI-M

New Delhi, June 1 (IANS) The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ‘immediately drop’ Communication and IT Minister A. Raja for his alleged involvement in the 2G spectrum allocation scam that cost the nation ‘Rs.190,000 crore’.

In a letter to the prime minister, CPI-M politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP Sitaram Yechury demanded that ‘immediate steps’ should be taken to ‘recover lost licence and spectrum fees of about Rs.190,000 crore by using 3G licence figures as the benchmark.’

The letter, dated May 31, was released by Yechury here Tuesday at a press conference.

‘The recent 3G allocation has established the market price of spectrum, which is a scarce national resource. If we use the recent 3G auction price to benchmark the spectrum price for 2G as TRAI has recently suggested, the loss is of the order of a whopping Rs.190,000 crore,’ Yechury said.

‘Immediately drop Raja from the cabinet while the probe is in progress to prevent undue influence being used to thwart the probe,’ Yechury, who is also the leader of the CPI-M in the Rajya Sabha, said in the letter.

He asked Manmohan Singh to suspend the officials ‘against whom now prima facie case exists for illegalities.’

Admitting that there are coalition compulsion on the prime minister in taking action against Raja, who is the leader of the DMK, one of the major allies in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Yechury told reporters that ‘there are also compulsions of principles and values.’

‘The prime minister has always raised the premium of the value based politics,’ Yechury said.

Yechury also distributed the copy of the recent Post and Telcommunications audit report, which said the whole process of issue of 2G spectrum licence ‘lacked fairness and transparency.’

Accusing the UPA government of promoting perverted capitalism ‘which is celebrated as India’s growth story’, Yechury said the 2G spectrum scandal is a clear case of ‘crony capitalism.’