Jaswant says he’ll name mole in PMO

NEW DELHI: A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh threw down the gauntlet, senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh on Monday announced that he was up for the challenge. Mr Singh said he was ready to reveal the name of the alleged mole in the PMO during the PV Narasimha Rao’s tenure.

The Prime Minister had yesterday said that Mr Singh should display the ‘courage and decency’ to name the mole. Taking exception to the PM’s phraseology, Jaswant Singh told his colleagues, according to BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, that he would forward to the PM on Tuesday the letter purportedly written by a US diplomat to a Senator about the American mole in P V Narasimha Rao’s PMO.

With Jaswant Singh and his colleagues tightlipped about the identity of the man, the needle of suspicion was moving wildly. The buzz was particularly strong about two officials who were part of the Narasimha Rao PMO and were known for their links with the Americans.

Rubbishing Singh’s claims, the PM on Sunday said,”If he has the decency and courage, he should name the person he is accusing of being a mole. We are not afraid of any debate on any issue.’’

Jaswant Singh told a TV channel: ‘‘I am actually not given to indecent exposure and he (the PM) does not have to challenge me. I will seek a time with him. I will go and give him the document that I have.’’ But he refused to divulge the name of the alleged mole. ‘‘I will not make public the names because there is a national purpose behind it.’’ It is learnt that Jaswant Singh may speak to the Press on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, defence minister Pranab Mukherjee too dared Singh to name the mole he talks about in his just-released book, ‘A Call to Honour’. Picking up from where the PM had left off on Sunday, the defence minister said that ‘‘now he (Jaswant Singh) owes it to the nation to tell the truth.’’

In his controversial book, A Call to Honour, Mr Jaswant Singh had said that there was a mole in the PMO who was leaking information about the country’s nuclear programme to the United States.

Mr Singh claimed he had come to know about the presence of a mole in the PMO about a decade ago, but remained quiet as he did not want to sensationalise the issue.

The former minister’s assertion is quite discomforting for the Congress, which did not expect the BJP leader to join issue with the government and the prime minister. It appears that Mr Singh, who is under attack from the ruling side as well as his own party, is keen to dispel the impression that the pre-release leaks on the book were aimed at ensuring publicity for his book. In an attempt to mollify his critics within the BJP, Mr Singh today clarified that he had not blamed Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi for the riots.

The BJP is unhappy with the former minister for aiding the efforts of the UPA to shift the focus away from the troubles confronting it. A recent meeting of senior BJP functionaries, in fact, saw the participants launching an attack against Mr Singh.