Jaswant Singh

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday dared in the Rajya Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh to come out with the name of the "mole" in the Prime Minister's Office during the P.V. Narasimha Rao regime in the 1990s.

Mr. Jaswant Singh had mentioned about a "mole'' in his recently published book, A Call to Honour — In Service of Emergent India.

"It is because I hold Jaswant Singhji in high esteem that when he levels serious charges against the PMO and about the present PMO too — in television interviews — that we were being snooped [upon] and are even now being snooped [on], that I appeal to his sense of chivalry to name the person if he has any evidence. And if you do not have, then let the country draw its own conclusions."

The Prime Minister's two-minute intervention came after Mr. Jaswant Singh's two-hour-long clarification.

The treasury benches shouted, "mole, mole," leading to two adjournments. Chairman Bhairon Singh Shekhawat had allowed a limited discussion on the issue in response to the resolutions moved by Shahid Siddiqui (Samajwadi Party) and V. Narayanaswamy (Congress), seeking clarity on the issue, both from Dr. Singh and Mr. Singh.

The Prime Minister's sense of outrage was evident from the unusual number of interventions he made during the course of the long clarification by Mr. Jaswant Singh.

At one point, Dr. Singh said, "We want the name of the mole. Why is he shying away from naming the person?"

Later, outside the House, he was quoted by agencies as saying that Mr. Jaswant Singh's statement in the House showed how low the top BJP leadership could "stoop."

Heated exchanges

Amid heated exchanges between the Congress and BJP members, Mr. Jaswant Singh recalled a letter sent by him last Friday to the Prime Minister that spoke of a communication in 1995 between United States Senator Thomas W. Grahams and the former U.S. Ambassador, Harry Barnes, and on India's nuclear programme, and about a "secret meeting" convened by Narasimha Rao on India's nuclear programme in Bangalore.

The letter with the subject, "Indian Nuclear Testing — deployment of Prithvi and other steps," made references to who participated in the secret meeting, what was discussed and the consequences of a nuclear test by India.

"The question that faced India as a challenge was of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It has been reported that Dr. Manmohan Singh, who was the Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao Government was opposed to nuclear testing on economic grounds," Mr. Jaswant Singh said.

Manmohan Singh

This brought the Prime Minister to his feet. "What is the relevance of this? He should answer the simple question of who is the mole. That is the question," he said.

CPI (M) leader Brinda Karat wanted to know why Mr. Jaswant Singh had kept the information hidden for so long.

Alleged leak

Mr. Jaswant Singh said: "I am trying to establish that the centrality was the U.S. intention to control, curb and put under tight wrap India's nuclear programme. In 1995, the plan to hold a nuclear test was leaked and the plan was thwarted."

Linking the alleged leak in 1995 with the July 2005 signing of the India-U.S. nuclear deal that "abandoned the autonomy of India's programme achieved during Vajpayee's regime in 1998," Mr. Jaswant Singh said: "I am being asked what we did with the information. The principle challenge before the Vajpayee Government was to somehow ensure that before anything else was done, we conduct the test and we did that within two months of coming into office. In 1974, Indira Gandhi achieved that very same thing — she kept it under the wraps."

Relevant papers

Mr. Jaswant Singh said he had not used the word `mole'. He had given the relevant papers to the Prime Minister with "explicit and implicit" information. It was for the Government to recognise it and act on it.

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