PAC splits along party lines on 2G probe

A furore within the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament over the summoning of witnesses today has put a question mark over the progress of its telecom spectrum probe.

The committee has cancelled its meeting tomorrow to question Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar and principal secretary to the Prime Minister, T K A Nair, after failing (due to the inter-party fight) to hear Central Bureau of Investigation chief A P Singh, Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati and law secretary D R Meena today.

Instead, it has convened an internal meeting the coming Thursday to decide, among other things, if it wants to call Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as part of the probe. The PM has already written a letter to PAC chief, BJP veteran Murali Manohar Joshi, saying he is ready to so appear. The meeting will also decide if it should call Chandrashekar and Nair again.

Today’s meeting, according to sources in the Committee, witnessed a sharp divide between members of parties from the ruling United Progressive Alliance and the non-UPA. Tempers ran so high that eventually Joshi had to resort to division (voting) to decide if the PAC could question the witnesses. Even after the Congress-DMK lobby lost the vote by a 7-5 margin, they continued to disrupt, finally forcing Joshi to stop the meeting today.

“The Committee has decided not to have a press conference,” he told reporters after the meeting got cancelled.

As soon as the meeting started at 11 am, Congress members K S Rao, Naveen Jindal, Arun Kumar and Jitendra Singh raised objections on summoning witnesses on the ground that the issue was before a court. Supported by DMK’s Tiruchi Siva, this group also cited the formation of a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the same issue to stall further hearing.

K S Rao and Jindal, at one point of time, said the committee should also call former telecom minister A Raja, Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal and other companies “who have benefitted” from the 2G spectrum allocation.

Congressman Safuddin Soz suggested the committee defer the proceedings for a month. It was promptly rejected and the BJD’s Bhartruhari Mahtab argued that if Parliament and even the media could discuss the issue, why couldn’t the panel hear witnesses?

From 11 am to 2 pm, no hearing could take place. When the committee resumed the meeting at 2.30 pm, the furore resurfaced and continued for almost an hour. Finally, when the law secretary was summoned around 3.30 pm, he could barely talk for 10 minutes. Members, including N K Singh of the JD(U), were obstructed by the Congress-DMK lobby from asking questions.

Amidst the uproar, the committee decided to meet on April 21 and then on April 25-26. But no one is sure how far the committee can progress now, after the Congress-DMK made it clear that it would apply the same disruptive tactics it faced in Parliament from the opposition on the formation of a PAC.