Veerappa Moily defends PM on the Antrix-Devas deal

Defending Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the Antrix-Devas deal issue,Union Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily on Tuesday said the former never wanted to hide anything and had acted swiftly and scrapped the pact.

“…Now things are coming out…Two committees were appointed by the Prime Minister. He never wanted to hide anything,” Moily said reacting to BJP questioning Singh’s ‘silence’ on the issue in the backdrop of the blacklisting of four scientists,including former ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair.

As soon as the scam surfaced,the Prime Minister appointed two committees to look into it and annulled the deal after getting the opinion of the Law Minister,he said.

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Moily,however,admitted that “somewhere you know there was no proper handling” but asserted the Prime Minister could not be blamed for it.

He was speaking after inaugurating a conference on “Investor’s Meet” organised by Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Institute of Chartered Accounts of India here.