New Delhi,
Eight years after the 2G Spectrum scam first jolted the Congress-led UPA, Salman Khurshid, a minister in the erstwhile government, came up with a defence rejecting charges of criminality then CAG Vinod Rai made in his report on the matter.

Rai’s fantastical Rs 1.76 lakh crore presumptive loss figure due to “UPA’s faulty 2G spectrum allocation” contributed principally to Congress’ 2014 Lok Sabha election debacle.

But former Law Minister in the UPA regime Salman Khurshid on Thursday argued that his government had not indulged in any criminality and was only to be blamed for not doing enough to counter then Opposition BJP’s charges of corruption.

“We did not engage in criminality. The policy choices we made were honest. But we lost the perception war because we did not do enough to fight back. Our inability to counter the way we were projected hurt us. In life, you can make mistakes but we drifted in a situation in the country where all mistakes were taken as dishonesty. There was no criminality and the court has now established this. Some people should apologise,” Khurshid said, introducing his book “Spectrum Politics: Unveiling the Defence” published by Rupa.

While Khurshid sought to pin the blame of Congress’ 2014 electoral debacle on the party’s failure to fight back, his colleague and finance minister in UPA-II P Chidambaram blamed the bureaucracy for its inability to defend the 2G Spectrum allocation policy of first come first served.