Winter Session likely to be cut short

With Opposition disallowing functioning of Parliament, moves are afoot to truncate the Winter Session of Parliament as early as tomorrow.

High level Sources told PTI that Parliament could be adjourned sine die as the deadlock is continuing and a huge amount of money is being wasted as proper functioning cannot take place.

The Winter Session commenced on November nine and is slated to end on December 13.

The move to cut short the Session comes in the wake of government's steadfast refusal to agree for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into 2G spectrum scam and Opposition being unrelenting on pressing the demand.

The government is not ready to accept the demand for a JPC into 2G spectrum allocation as it fears that the Prime Minister could be summoned, the sources claimed.

Efforts have been made to reconcile the differences between the government and Opposition over the JPC issue with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee holding two rounds of meetings with leaders of all parties which failed.

Sources said while all the Opposition parties are united on the JPC demand, some allies of the UPA and sections in Congress are also indicating their willingness to have such a probe given the extent of the scam as pointed out in the CAG report.

The government has been insisting that Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), headed by BJP leader M M Joshi, was appropriate to go into the CAG report.

Later on, it proposed that the multi-disciplinary investigative agencies could be attached to the PAC.

However, the Opposition has maintained that it would accept nothing less than JPC. It argues that PAC does not have powers to summon senior ministers, which JPC could.

Due to the stand-off, Parliament failed to function for all the ninth consecutive day today.