Thaindian News

Chennai, Feb 2 (IANS) AIADMK general secretary J. Jayalalithaa Wednesday termed the arrest of DMK leader and former communications minister A. Raja as “a half-baked action” and said it “leaves many questions unanswered”.”This arrest raises more questions than it answers and leaves many questions unanswered. The arrest is too little and too late,” she said in a statement.

“This arrest seems to be a ruse to hoodwink the public and also to tell the Supreme Court that some action has been taken with regard to the Spectrum 2-G Scam,” she added.

Raja and two of his aides were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in New Delhi Wednesday for their role in the controversial allocation of airwaves for second generation (2G) telecom services.

Raja was forced to resign Nov 14 last year after the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) indicted him in the spectrum allocation scam and for causing losses of between Rs.58,000 crore ($12.8 billion) and Rs.1.76 lakh crore ($40 billion) to the exchequer.

Jayalalithaa said the AIADMK’s demand for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe on the issue stands, more so because the union government has contradicted itself several times over.

“The CAG is an arm of the government. The CAG’s report, tabled in parliament, said that an enormous scam had been perpetrated, causing a loss of over Rs.1,76,000 crore to the nation,” she said.

“Kapil Sibal, we presume, was also speaking on behalf of the central government as union telecom minister, when he stated that no loss had been caused to the nation by Raja - in fact, the words he used were ‘zero loss,” Jayalalithaa said.

“Now, the CBI, another arm of the government, has arrested Raja. If Raja had done nothing wrong, then why has he been arrested by the CBI?” she asked.

According to Jayalalithaa, if the CBI’s intentions are genuine, a lot more persons should have been arrested by now.

“Corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, executives of several telecom companies that benefited from the fraud, Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi and her mother Rajathi, who have all been recorded as accomplices of Raja in perpetrating the world’s largest scam, should all be behind bars. This has not been done,” Jayalalithaa said.

According to her, the Congress is also possibly using the arrest as a pressure tactic to get a better deal from the DMK during seat-sharing talks for the forthcoming Tamil Nadu assembly elections.