New Delhi, Sep 29 (IANS) Congress president Sonia Gandhi will Thursday hold a meeting with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and two other senior party leaders in a bid to end the crisis arising out of the controversial finance ministry note on 2G spectrum.
Mukherjee, along with Defence Minister A.K. Antony and Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel, are meeting at 10 Janpath — residence of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson.
‘Efforts are on at party and government level to defuse the situation,’ a Congress leader said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to hold a meeting of ministers in the evening to sort out the issue that has given rise to speculation about differences between Mukherjee and Home Minister P. Chidambaram on the 2G spectrum allocation.
The March 25 note to the prime minister’s office (PMO) from the finance ministry says the airwaves could have been auctioned in 2008 if Chidambaram, who was then the finance minister, had ‘stuck to his stand’.
In the note, the finance ministry says Chidambaram could have prevented spectrum from being given away at throwaway prices by insisting on its auction — implying that presumptive losses worth thousands of crores of rupees could have thus been avoided.
