Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Prime Minister is taking the battle to the Opposition camp.
Defending his former boss PV Narasimha Rao, Manmohan Singh has challenged BJP leader Jaswant Singh to name the person in Rao's PMO, who as the former foreign minister claims was a CIA mole.
"If he has the courage or decency, he should name the person that he is accusing of being a mole. We are not afraid of any debate. This shows that the Opposition has no real issues and is seeking excuses," Manmohan Singh said.
Jaswant Singh has claimed in his book A Call To Honour that someone in the PMO during late prime minister P V Narasimha Rao's tenure had leaked nuclear secrets to the US and that "we are still being snooped".
The senior BJP leader said he had come to know about this a decade ago, but remained quiet so far as he did not want to sensationalise the issue. "The honour of the Prime Minister's Office, to an extent, was at stake. We were snooped, we are still being snooped," he said.
Jaswant Singh is under attack not only from the Treasury Benches but also from within the Sangh Parivar. An RSS mouthpiece in its latest edition has questioned the timing of the release of his book as it came just days after the Mumbai blasts.
Singh's detailed narration of the Kandahar episode, when he had to accompany three terrorists to their freedom, too couldn't have come at a worse time as the BJP is preparing to corner the government for being soft on terror.
"During the crisis, Congress leaders themselves had put a lot of pressure on us to get the hostages released. They had asked the government to secure their release," VK Malhotra of BJP, claims.
There is now a clear possibility that as the Monsoon Session of Parliament begins on Monday, the UPA Government could very well use Jaswant Singh's book for its own defense against BJP's charges.
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