Public Accounts Committee Chairman Murli Manohar Joshi on Friday said he would make another attempt to get the draft report on 2G spectrum allocation approved by the committee so that it could be submitted again to the Speaker for tabling in Parliament.
Speaker Meira Kumar gave “no reason” for rejecting the report and sending it back to him, Dr. Joshi told journalists at the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters here.
“Speaker's prerogative”
Dr. Joshi refused to confirm or deny news reports that the Speaker cited non-approval of the draft PAC document by the committee as the reason for returning it. Returning the report was the “Speaker's prerogative.”
“I will place the report and the Speaker's letter before the new PAC [which is also headed by him],” he said. The committee would then decide whether it wanted to look at the 2G spectrum issue all over again, approve the existing draft report or drop the subject altogether,” he said.
Parliamentary rules for committees make it very clear that if a report is not approved by the committee, it cannot be considered to be a PAC report at all. Equally clear is that if the new PAC were to decide not to approve the report, it will be as good as a non-report.
However, Dr. Joshi said he was not perturbed by that possibility, as “through the media” it has already been widely disseminated. It did not matter, therefore, if it did not get legitimacy as a valid document produced by a parliamentary committee. The report became controversial after 11 of the 21 members of the PAC stated in writing to the Speaker they had rejected it. Their charge was that Dr. Joshi tried to bulldoze the majority of the members.
On the other hand, he charged the PAC members from the Congress and allied parties with adopting a partisan approach and not letting the report go through as it had cast aspersions on the Prime Minister's Office, the Home Minister and others.
