Joshi renews 2G report, Cong demands his head

The clash between ruling UPA and opposition members in Parliament over the reworked Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the telecom spectrum (‘2G’) allocation scam has started again, with Congress party members demanding immediate removal of Murli Manohar Joshi, the chairman.

Joshi had circulated a reworked PAC report yesterday. In his covering letter, he’d said the reworked PAC report was being circulated because it was unfinished work of the previous committee (also chaired by him and voted down by the pro-government majority on the panel).

Senior members of the PAC said it was the discretion of the chairman to circulate a report but it could be adopted only by the full PAC.

 

In the current PAC, the UPA has 13 members and the opposition parties, Joshi included, have eight.

“The report has been circulated and now we will go through it in detail and only then can it be adopted,” said a senior member of the PAC.

UPA members on the PAC say Joshi is playing partisan politics and should be removed.

“The report deserves to be thrown in the garbage,” said Sanjay Nirupam of the Congress.

He said it was decided in the last meeting of the PAC that views of constitutional experts would be taken on the standoff and discussed but Joshi had circulated the report without circulating the opinions of these experts.

However, his Bharatiya Janata Party says Joshi did nothing wrong in circulating the report.

“The report was sent to the Speaker and the Speaker said the report has not been adopted. So, naturally, if the report has not been adopted by a committee, then it has to be circulated to be adopted. So, if the report has been circulated, there is nothing wrong in it,” said S S Ahluwalia, BJP leader.