The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) report on 2G Spectrum allocation issue, that was adopted on September 27 and which exonerated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram of any wrong doing, will be given to Lok Speaker Meira Kumar, along with the dissent notes of some Opposition members, by this month end.
The report rubbished the loss figure of Rs. 1.76 lakh crore estimated by the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) by stating it was “ill-conceived” and blamed the then Communication Minister and DMK Lok Sabha MP A. Raja for the episode.
JPC Chairman and Congress MP, P.C. Chacko, told The Hindu on Friday that after getting the dissent notes he would go through them and ensure that there were no derogatory statements against anybody or factual errors. “As the Chairman of the Committee, I have powers to remove such words or sentences,” he said, adding that thereafter the report would be printed and submitted to the Speaker, he said.
To a question, he said the 30-member JPC meeting would not be convened hereafter and all the work relating to the Committee would be carried out by himself with the help of the Secretariat.
Informed sources in the DMK said its representative on the Committee, T.R. Baalu, would present his dissent note to Mr. Chacko in the next few days. Mr. Baalu had gone on record that the Committee had adopted a “half-baked report” as his request for examining former minister Raja and officials of the Department of Telecom was turned down by the Chairman. Some documents of the DoT, requested by him for examination by the JPC, were not circulated.
“The DMK is wondering how the Chairman can reject such request because the original files containing these documents were never before the JPC — in fact, they are in the custody of the CBI special court.”
Earlier Mr. Baalu, in a letter, wanted to know from Mr. Chacko: “May I request you to kindly disclose the source from which you were able to obtain copies of the documents? It is somewhat disturbing that the Chairman of the JPC is getting documents — from undisclosed sources — that are not being shared with the other members of the Committee.”
