Ahmedabad

Commenting on former TRAI chairman Pradip Baijal’s allegations against the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh regarding the spectrum allocation, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said here that he knew that Baijal had been harassed.

Jaitley was here to brief media about achievements of the NDA government in the last one year.

Asked about Baijal’s allegations, the senior BJP leader said, “He worked with me also, I found him to be a bright and outstanding officer.

“He has been unfairly targeted by UPA. He was targeted and harassed. He met me after retirement and I was aware about the harassment inflicted upon him,” Jaitley said.

Baijal, who was probed in connection with the 2G spectrum allocation scam, has alleged that Singh had warned him of “harm” if he did not cooperate. He has also alleged that the CBI wanted him to “implicate” Arun Shourie and Ratan Tata in the case.

In his self-published book, “The Complete Story of Indian Reforms: 2G, Power and Private Enterprise – A Practitioner’s Diary’, Baijal, who was appointed head of the telecom watchdog by the NDA government in 2003, said the 2G scam trail began under UPA’s Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran.

PTI