Confirmation came from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Wednesday, that the correspondence between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the then Telecommunications Minister, A.Raja, on the implementation of the telecom policy and 2G spectrum pricing to an applicant under Right to Information Act (RTI) after Central Information Commission (CIC) reworded the specific information sought by the petitioner as his queries were in Hindi which was a mix of allegations and his desire for what the nation should be.

The main query was why there was continuance in relationship with Mr. Raja after serious allegations of corruption were leveled against him to which the PMO said they did not have any record of the allegations relating to corruption.

Mr. Gandhi directed PMO to provide attested copies of recordings regarding charges of corruption against A. Raja and copies of filing notings on correspondence in this regard before the 10^th of July, 2011.

The PMO stated that such reports give the impression that the letters have not been disclosed by their office in response to Right to Information applications.

They said, “However, Prime Minister’s Office has always provided the information sought, in response to Right to Information applications. Applicants, who have earlier sought copies of correspondence between Shri Raja and the Prime Minister, have already in the past been provided these copies by PMO. In the case reported upon in the media, the actual request made was not for these letters. As the Commission, after consulting the applicant, has reframed the request as requiring disclosure of the aforementioned correspondence, copies of the same would be made available to the applicant in this case as well.”

Report by Sumit