Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday moved a motion in the Lok Sabha for the appointment of a 30-member Joint Parliamentary Committee to go into the 2G spectrum issue. The 20 members from the Lower House who would be in the JPC were named. The names of the remaining 10 who would represent the Upper House would be announced on March 1, when the House officially joins the JPC.
The JPC would examine “policy prescriptions and their interpretation by successive governments…in the allocation and pricing of telecom licences and spectrum from 1998 to 2009.”
The fact that Mr. Mukherjee would move the motion was kept a secret, government sources said, as there was no precedent: it is usually done by either the Parliamentary Affairs Minister or the Minister concerned. However, it was felt that since in his capacity as Leader of the House Mr. Mukherjee had led the negotiations with the Opposition, it would be better if he moved the motion, as he also commanded the sort of respect across the House that would ensure he was not interrupted, the sources added.
The names of the Rajya Sabha members will be communicated to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar on March 1, after which she will nominate the chairperson, to be selected from among the eight Congress Lok Sabha MPs on the JPC: they are V. Kishore Chandra Deo, Paban Singh Ghatowar, Jai Prakash Agarwal, Deepender Singh Hooda, P.C. Chacko, Manish Tewari, Nirmal Khatri and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. Government sources said either Mr. Deo or Mr. Chacko would be the Chairman of the JPC.
The BJP MPs whose names figure in the JPC list from the Lok Sabha are: Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Harin Pathak and Gopinath Munde. The others are T.R Baalu (DMK), Kalyan Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Sharad Yadav (Janata Dal-United), Dara Singh Chauhan (BSP), Akhilesh Yadav (SP), Gurudas Dasgupta (CPI), Arjun Charan Sethi (BJD) and M. Thambi Durai (AIADMK).
Mr. Thambi Durai's inclusion is likely to add an edge to the JPC, if his speech in the Lok Sabha on Thursday during a discussion on the JPC is any indication: as he focussed on the 2G spectrum scam, the DMK was on its feet in protest.
The BJP had offered to give one of its JPC seats to its ally, the Shiv Sena, but it turned down the offer. Sources said this was because a multinational company owned by one of its Rajya Sabha members was allotted 2G spectrum — and therefore, there would be a conflict of interest.
Similarly, the CPI(M), which was entitled to a member each from the two Houses, eventually gave up its Lok Sabha quota to the CPI, its ally in the Left grouping. So, instead of the CPI(M)'s Basudeb Acharia, the CPI's Gurudas Dasgupta will be a member of the JPC.
From Rajya Sabha
Sources added that the JPC members from the Rajya Sabha are likely to be S.S. Ahluwalia, Ravi Shankar Prasad (both BJP), Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), Ramchandra Prasad Singh (JD-U), Dr. Yogendra P. Trivedi (Nationalist Congress Party), P.N. Siva (DMK) and Satish Chandra Mishra (Bahujan Samaj Party). The Congress is yet to decide on the three Rajya Sabha MPs who will represent the party on the JPC.
