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New Delhi: Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh today sent a letter to former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh stating that the former minister's letter did not contain any name of the alleged US 'mole' in the Prime Minister's Office, during the tenure of P.V.Narasimha Rao. "The alleged informant is not named nor is there any confirmation that the person was from the PMO, " Dr. Singh wrote to Jaswant Singh, who is also the leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha. However, Dr. Singh has asked Jaswant Singh to disclose in public domain if he has any further information on this issue. "If you have any further information in this regard you may wish to disclose it to the public," Dr. Singh wrote in the letter. On Saturday, Jaswant Singh had said that he had named the mole in a letter to the Prime Minister after he failed to get an appointment from him on this issue. Denying media reports that any such names had been referred in the letter, Media Advisor of Prime Minister, Sanjay Baru said: "Jaswant Singh`s letter to the Prime Minister was no different from what he has already shared with the media," adding that a copy of the letter has already been published in the latest issue of India Today. Prime Minister in his letter to Jaswant Singh also expressed 'surprise' that the documents sent by the BJP leader was in his possession when he was a Cabinet member during the NDA regime and still did not share it with former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Meanwhile, Jaswant Singh went into a stoic silence and refused to speak to media on the current development. Already on a back- foot, Jaswant Singh returned to Delhi from Mumbai today. His Private Secretary told media persons that Singh would take the future course of action only after going through the Prime Minister's letter. Mole episode a nightmare: Arunachalam New Delhi: Noted scientist VS Arunachalam has described the period when media reported that he was the US 'mole' referred by Jaswant Singh in his new book "A Call to Honour" as a "pure nightmare". Recounting the horrific period when media scrambled to get a response from him about his "alleged betrayal", Arunachalam wrote in a column titled "A Loss of Honour" in English daily Hindustan Times: "I was left scrambling with all the phones at home ringing incessantly and all asking the same questions about my alleged betrayal". Arunachalam who had never been associated with the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and was the scientific advisor to the Defence Minister till 1992, said that facts like his connections with the government and its defence and secret projects ending in 1992 were completely overlooked by the speculators and sensationalist media-men. "Having worked all my life on important projects for India, I had been maligned (and threatened) in the past, but this was a new and unconscionable low", the former DRDO Chief stated. Cautioning the Indian scientists community of the dangers posed for working in a politically polarized country, he said: "The science community in India in its eagerness to perform, is yet to fully comprehend the lurking dangers and inherent vulnerabilities of working in a badly polarized political environment". Arunachalam further wrote that one of the callers "wondered" whether the episode was due to his working closely with former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. "Other was surprised that Mr. Jaswant Singh did not find it fit to call me to assure his help when the press started hounding me," he added. However, it may be recalled that Singh had later said Arunachalam was an eminent scientist and it was not proper to drag his name in the controversy. The nuclear scientist stated that the grim episode affected his family members a lot and seeing their "harrowed faces" he decided to fight back to clear all the allegations. "My sister, a heart patient had a few episodes of pain and all I could pray was that the tablets stashed under the tongue would work their magic. My son who took all the calls in the night, refusing to even think that his father was a traitor, was a broken young man in the morning," he stated. |
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