No reply from Manmohan Singh ever: Subramaniam Swamy

New Delhi :Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had never written back to his requests for sanctioning prosecution of former telecom minister A Raja on the 2G scam and instead forwarded the request letter to the tainted minister against whom action was sought, claimed Janata Dal chief Subramaniam Swamy on Thursday.

In yet another embarrassment to the government, the Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday asked for the filing of an affidavit on behalf of the Prime Minister on his delay in acting against the 2G Spectrum Scam and not replying to the repeated requests of Swamy.

Swami said since Nov 29, 2008, he had written five times to the Prime Minister ?each time with additional documents?, but got no reply.

He said the only reply came from A Raja himself to whom the PM had forwarded his letter for prosecution.

?Mr Raja wrote me a letter,? he said, adding that it was following a letter that the PM forwarded to him [Raja] .

Swamy said he received Raja?s letter in December 2009.

?Under the Supreme Court judgement it is totally illegal,? said Swamy, ?since the PM cannot send the letter back to the person who is to be prosecuted.?

The Supreme Court said on Thursday: “The matter is extremely serious. We must know what has been kept back.”

The court made the remark after the Solicitor General replied to SC on why there was delay in sanctioning prosecution of former telecom minister A Raja.

Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium replied to the Supreme Court’s queries related to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ‘silence’ in the spectrum scam.

On Tuesday, the court had asked the government to explain why the PM took 11 months to respond to a request by Subramaniam Swamy that asked for Telecom Minister A Raja to be prosecuted for the 2G scam.

On Wednesday, Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium said that the Supreme Court’s remarks of alleged inaction by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the 2G spectrum scam are not an embarrassment, even as India’s major opposition BJP demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) into the whole issue and an immediate response from the PM to the court.

Telecom Minister A Raja last Sunday resigned while a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on the huge losses to the exchequer (Rs 1.76 lakh crore) was tabled in Parliament.