Sanjay Nirupam slaps legal notice on Vinod Rai, wants unconditional apology

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam has sent a legal notice to former Comptroller and Auditor-General Vinod Rai, over allegations in Rai’s book that he tried to influence the auditor in 2G issue.

Nirupam had last week termed Rai’s claim that he along with Congress colleagues Sandeep Dikshit and Ashwani Kumar had sought to pressure Rai to keep then prime minister Manmohan Singh's name out of reports on 2G and coal-block allocations as an “outright lie”.

Nirupam's lawyer asked Rai to “tender an unconditional apology” in writing within 15 days of the receipt of the notice stating that imputations made by him against the Congress leader were “baseless, false and concocted, failing which I have strict instructions to initiate appropriate proceedings against you, including criminal proceedings against you at your cost and peril,” he said in the notice.

Nirupam had said, “I never talked to him. I challenge his memory and want to remind him that I never met him and had claimed he had strongly criticised the CAG at the meetings of the Murli Manohar Joshi-led Public Accounts Committee, which examined the audit report on the 2G spectrum allocation.