The impasse in Parliament continued today, as the government and Opposition parties were unable to reach a solution over the latter’s demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the 2G spectrum allocation controversy. At the luncheon meeting hosted by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the government only heard various suggestions and said it would come back to the various parties after consulting the Prime Minister.
To strengthen their demand, the Opposition parties even dragged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s office into the controversy. CPI(M) politburo member Sitaram Yechury said: “The former telecom minister (A Raja) had always maintained that his decisions were cleared by the Prime Minister’s Office. It was Raja, who had pointed his finger at the Prime Minister. If the PM’s role is to be made clear, then there cannot be any mechanism better than the JPC.”
Some Opposition parties have already started studying documents and Raja’s previous assertions to sharpen the attack on the Prime Minister’s Office, to ascertain his culpability and force the government to accept their demand.
Before holding the much-anticipated luncheon meeting with various political parties, the finance minister and Leader of the Lok Sabha, Pranab Mukherjee, held a separate meeting with top BJP leaders L K Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley.
In the meeting, the BJP made it clear that the party was not satisfied with the CAG report on 2G spectrum being sent to the Public Accounts Committee. “We are not concerned about the auditing. We are worried about the corruption and the policy,” Jaitley told Mukherjee.
When the BJP demanded an overall JPC to tackle the three corruption issues such as Adarsh housing in Mumbai, the recently-held Commonwealth Games in Delhi and 2G spectrum allocation, Mukherjee pointed out that some of the aspects are related to the state list like land in Adarsh society and sports. The BJP leadership retorted that the Adarsh scam involves defence land and India’s participation in any international sports event becomes a central subject.
In the meeting, Yechury asked the finance minister if the government had any alternative proposal. The finance minister said that after hearing the political parties, he would discuss the outcome of the meeting with the Prime Minister and come back to the parties with the government’s view. A section of the UPA suggests that formation of an enquiry commission under a sitting Supreme Court judge may become a face-saver between the two sides.
Even before the Parliament session began for the day, the members of BJP’s parliamentary party had met in the morning and unanimously decided they would continue for a JPC probe in the 2G spectrum allocation case, a demand which the BJP claims to have been making since 2007.
There were backroom consultations between Opposition parties like the BJP, CPI(M) and the BSP on the strategy to keep up the pressure. All the three parties emphasised that they were not interested in digging the audit findings through the Public Accounts Committee but want to look into the broader policy issues. “JPC will be able to go into the entire gamut of how the process of spectrum allocation started. We can look into the policy loopholes,” said Yechury.
“There is no reason to get disheartened that the government has rejected our demand for setting up of a JPC. We will continue our fight against corruption. There is an urgent need for a JPC to investigate scams in 2G spectrum allocation, Adarsh Society scandal and Commonwealth Games,” said S S Ahluwalia, senior leader of BJP.
The finance minister, meanwhile, asked the government auditor to suggest corrective measures for raising tax and non-tax receipts. “I would like the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) to analyse the areas where there are leakages in government revenue and recommend corrective measures to increase not only the tax but also the non-tax receipts,” he said, while addressing a conference to mark 150 years of the institution.
