Vinod Rai's scam of lies… he must apologise: Cong

New Delhi: Buoyed by the 2G spectrum case verdict, the Congress on Thursday said that truth has finally prevailed and demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley apologise to the nation for the BJP's alleged "propaganda and lies" on the issue. The Congress also said that accountability should be fixed against those including former CAG Vinod Rai who had dubbed it a scam.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh, whose UPA-II government was rocked by the 2G scam, said the court judgement needs to be respected as it has "pronounced that the massive propaganda" unleashed against his government was without any foundation. "We respect the court's judgement. I do not want to boast (about) anything. I think the court's judgement has to be respected. "I am glad that the court has pronounced unambiguously that all this massive propaganda which was being done against the UPA was without any foundation," Singh said.

Asked about allegations that lies were spread against his government, he said, "Well, the judgement speaks for itself." Former Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said, "After the 2G judgement by the Special Court. Zero gain for BJP. My position is vindicated."

He said, "Today my words have been proved right. There was no corruption, there was no loss. If there was any scam, it was a scam of lies, the Opposition's and Vinod Rai's lies. Vinod Rai must apologise."

As CAG, Rai had claimed a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer in 2008 2G spectrum allocation. In his comments following the CAG report, Sibal had claimed zero loss to the government.

Sibal on Thursday pointed out a lot of NPAs are on account of the telecom companies whose licences were cancelled. "They had to borrow money from banks and could not return and that is how many of the NPAs were accumulated," he said. He said the telecom sector is "in dire straits, thanks to Vinod Rai and thanks to the (then) Opposition and its leaders".

"If you create an atmosphere of suspicion and that everything the UPA did was wrong and the Opposition gets on to the bandwagon the entire atmosphere is vitiated...then you have positions like this," he said.