'Vinod Rai part of political conspiracy against UPA II'

New Delhi: In a tell-all book published a month after his acquittal in the 2G spectrum scam case, former telecom minister Andimuthu Raja has questioned former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's "palpable silence" in defending the telecom policy that he had approved.

In his book '2G Saga Unfolds', Raja slammed the then CAG Vinod Rai saying the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General was "severely compromised" by Rai who had "ulterior motives" in over-reaching his constitutional function while auditing accounts relating to the 2G spectrum allocation.

Raja, who wrote the book during the trial of the case, claimed that he had got Manmohan Singh's "approval to go ahead" for allocating 2G telecom spectrum to new players after he explained the whole process and that there was enough spectrum available.

Singh, he went on to claim, was repeatedly misinformed by his advisers and that telecom lobbies had influence over the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

"The UPA government's and even more so Dr Manmohan Singh's palpable silence about defending my wholly justified actions" was like "silencing of our nation's collective conscience".

Raja also claimed that the former prime minister did not have any clue about the CBI raids concerning the spectrum allocation.

In the book, he termed the 2G Scam as a "shameful blemish on the sanctity of the administrative system of the country".

"It is my conviction consequent to the trial proceedings that there was a political motivation to kill UPA 2 and Vinod Rai's was the shoulder on which the gun was placed," he wrote.

Last month, a special court had acquitted Raja and all other accused on charges of corruption and cheating in the 2G case.

While CAG put the presumptive loss in allocation of spectrum at Rs 1.76 lakh crore, the scam had led to Supreme Court cancelling 122 licences sold to companies.