2G SCAM

New York: P. Mukherjee, finance minister, has avoided direct comment on a note of his ministry to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said airwaves for Telecom could have been auctioned in 2008 as his cabinet colleague,  P. Chidambaram wanted. Speaking at a high-profile event hosted by the Asia Society here on Wednesday night, Mukherjee admitted that a note was indeed written by his office, but wanted to comment on the matter, saying i was sub judice."Today is a sensational news item came and it is through the exercise of the right to information. A note is sent by the Ministry of Finance to the Prime Minister. Someone claimed by using the right information to A copy of the note to

have, "he said.
"And it is used - whether legally it can be used or not is another story - but the fact of the matter is, someone saw it as an exhibit in a particular case," the Finance Minister added ."The matter is sub judice. The court is looking at it."His comments were in response to an inquiry by the former U.S. ambassador to India Frank Wisner that India is working on the issue of corruption in office.Earlier, after a speech at the India Investment Forum, co-hosted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry here, Mukherjee refused to direct any queries to the field of media on the matter.In a new twist to the second generation spectrum case, a note to the PMO of the Ministry of Finance said that the airwaves were auctioned in 2008 as Home Minister P.Chidambaram, the then Finance Minister had "stuck to his stand."In the letter, the Ministry of Finance, says Chidambaram could have prevented the spectrum of disposable prizes given away by insisting on the auction - a reference to suspected losses worth thousands of crores thus could have been avoided.The note, which was apparently shown Mukherjee and accessible through an application under the right to Information Act, was prepared by a deputy secretary in the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister's office sent to 25 March.The activist Vivek Garg, the RTI application filed in the PMO.When Communications Minister A. Raja is already a judicial custody along with 13 others, including his party DMK Rajya Sabha member and Kanimozhi, in connection with the case, both in court and the Supreme Court heard.According to the note in a meeting with Raja Jan 30, 2008, Chidambaram said: "He was not looking for the current regimes of entry fee or revenue share" of the spectrum to reconsider.The paper says even the then Finance Secretary in February 2008, after the award of the spectrum is agreed, said that the Department of Telecommunications (dot) can still go for an auction, invoking a clause that the award under the guidelines cancel."The Dot can be invoked this clause for the cancellation of licenses in case the Ministry of Finance to determine the state of the auction of the 4.4 MHz spectrum," the note adds that the actual allocation of the radio waves is only April 2008.