Don't worry; I have full faith in you: PM tells PC

Union Home Minister P Chidambaram called Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and discussed with him the issue of a finance ministry note on allocation of 2G spectrum which appeared to raise questions on his role.

The telephone call on Wednesday night lasted 20 minutes during which the Prime Minister is believed to have expressed full faith in the integrity of the former finance minister and that he was ready to say this, according to sources on Thursday.

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The sources said the prime minister also counselled Chidambaram to be patient till he returns home from New York on September 27.

The "secret" note was not shown to him, Singh is believed to have told Chidambaram, who was the finance minister during 2G spectrum allocation.

The March 25, 2011 document on allocation and pricing of 2G spectrum broadly suggests that Chidambaram could have insisted that the valuable resource could have been auctioned at the time the spectrum was sold on a first come, first served basis by the former Telecom Minister A Raja, now behind bars.

The note submitted to the Supreme Court on Wednesday was written by PGS Rao, deputy director in the Finance Ministry, to Vini Mahajan, joint secretary in the PMO.

The covering letter to the note also said that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had seen the note.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of India-Marxist on Thursday demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the role of P Chidambaram, who was the Finance Minister when the 2G spectrum allocation scam took place, in view of the "mounting evidence" against him.

Referring to the note submitted by the Finance Ministry to the Prime Minister's Office in March this year, the party said it had "authoritatively" shown that Chidambaram had then cleared the allotment of licences for 2G spectrum at the 2001 entry fee, "even though the finance secretary and his own ministry had pointed out the need for its revision".

It said that "evidence has also come to light that a meeting between the then Telecom Minister A Raja and Chidambaram had taken place in January 2008 in which, according to the note prepared by the finance secretary, the finance minister had stated that they are not going to re-visit the issue of entry fee or revenue sharing".

The note had made "the pertinent observation that if the finance ministry had stuck to its earlier stand, the licences given could have been cancelled," CPI-M politburo said in a statement in New Delhi.