New Delhi: To formulate the strategy to fight the 2G crisis following the controversial 2G note of the Finance Ministry, Home Minister P Chidambaram and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at his residence.
Mukherjee gave a statement on the 2G note at North Block in presence of Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Salman Khurshid.
Reading out from a prepared text, Mukherjee said, "A number of stories on 2G have appeared in 2011. A view was taken that a harominsed note based on facts be produced by various representatives of the Government."
"A background paper was prepared and sent to the PMO. The papers contain certain interpretations," he said but significantly added that the inferences in the note were not his views.
Earlier during the day, the two key Cabinet ministers also met Congress President Sonia Gandhi in this regard.
During the meeting, the Congress President has requested Mukherjee to speak to all involved including the Law Minister and others and prepare for defending Chidambaram in court.
The Finance Minister has told Sonia Gandhi that the controversial 2G note was not leaked out by the Finance Ministry, but came out from PMO on RTI request.
Mukherjee, in a written explanation earlier, attempted a balancing act and said that the 2G note was written after inputs received from the PMO and there was no criminality on the part of Chidambaram during his tenure as the finance minister in UPA-I.
Mukherjee played down reports of rift with Chidambaram and told Sonia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the controversial 2G note was just a background paper and was in no way an indictment of the Home Minister's role in scam.
Pranab's written explanation categorically states that the Finance ministry note was prepared in consultation with the Prime Minister's office and was handled by the senior-most bureaucrat in the country - the Cabinet Secretary.
The note, as Mukherjee explained, was made as a consolidated and comprehensive background note.
A meeting held on March 15 and 16 at the Cabinet Secretary's office, was attended by secretaries in Finance, Department of Telecom, Law, Environment ministries and the Principal Secretary in the PMO.
After the meeting, the Finance Ministry sent a 12-paragraph note to the Cabinet Secretary, who in turn returned it with 14 more paragraphs.
The Cabinet Secretary also asked for the document to be vetted and shown to Mukherjee. The inputs were provided by the PMO and the Cabinet Secretariat.
Congress leader and Union Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath, too, claimed that there was no infighting in the party over the note and the scam.
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