BREAKING HIS silence on the mole hunt triggered by Jaswant Singh's book, former cabinet secretary and ambassador to Washington Naresh Chandra has squelched reports and rumours of the possibility of him being the mole.
The first such allegation of Chandra being the mole surfaced in the 1990s. BJP ideologue S. Gurumurthy made the charges, naming him and one other functionary.
Speaking to the Hindustan Times, Chandra said when these charges surfaced in the form of a letter, he had himself brought this to the notice of the PMO — in September, 1997 — "just before the Gujral-Clinton meeting".
"I wrote to the PMO, suggesting that this was sheer nonsense and the government should take legal action because it amounted to defamation," he said, adding he was advised to ignore it because the government found no credibility in the letter.
In the context of Jaswant’s mole -- Chandra says he was never scheduled to attend the super-secret Bangalore meeting and he didn’t. He says, “They seemed completely misinformed about my travel programmes and views on the nuclear test.”
It's another matter that there is apparently no mole now — at least not one with a name. Jaswant himself has said he doesn't have a name. And Chandra is clearly saying here it's not him. Let the mole hunt continue.