Faced with criticism over the claims made by Sanjaya Baru and PC Parakh in their recently released books, the Prime Minister’s Office on Friday came out in strong defence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s 10-year track record in office.
Pankaj Pachauri, communications advisor to the Prime Minister, on Friday rejected the charge that Singh had remained silent on various issues facing his government over the last few years.
“The Prime Minister has made more than 1000 speeches and more than half of what he said has been achieved in last 10 years,” Pachauri said.
“In the last 10 years, the PM has made a speech every 3 days,” Pachauri noted, while ruing that “news channels do not cover the Prime Minister as much”.
“He has preferred to talk about politics on the floor of the House and in the last five years the Parliament has not given him enough chances to speak,” he added.
“In the last two years, communication between the media and the PMO has improved,” he said further.
Two recently released books – one by Singh’s former media advisor Sanjaya Baru and the other by former coal secretary PC Parakh – have blamed the PM for surrendering his authority to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and of inaction in preventing the coal blocks allocation scam.
Pachauri said he too, like Baru, has been offered to write a book on his stint in the PMO but will not write one.
Baru has been slammed by the PMO, Singh’s daughter and many others for betraying the trust of the PM by writing the book that apparently exposes the relationship between the PM and the Congress chief. Baru has alleged in the book that Sonia used to vet several of the PMO’s files.
Reacting on the issue, Pachauri said, “The PMO has made statements twice, his daughter too has made a statement.”
Parakh, in his book, claimed that the PM had failed to ensure that auction process was followed in the allocation of coal blocks, which led to the humongous scam dubbed as Coalgate.
