 "JPC extended till monsoon session")
“The JPC term has been extended till the last working day of the monsoon session now. Its tenure was ending on May 10, the last working day of the Budget session,” said a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionary who is part of the parliamentary committee. “We want the JPC meeting to be called at the earliest so that the draft report prepared by the JPC chairman can be rejected. But so far, there is no consultation on when the next meeting will happen.”
The Lok Sabha on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution to extend the JPC’s term. The Rajya Sabha will adopt a similar motion tomorrow. This will be the fifth extension to the JPC set up in March, 2011.
The 32-member committee is vertically divided, as 16 members of the opposition have joined hands to corner the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in the parliamentary committee. The opposition members have been holding closed-door meetings at the office of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).
Members of the BJP, BJD, the Left parties and the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam have questioned the JPC’s draft report that gave a clean-chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the spectrum scam.
Senior BJP leaders have repeatedly demanded that JPC call Prime Minister Singh before it to answer the queries raised by the Opposition.
The report also found that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was responsible for a loss of Rs 42,000 crore to the government. It further blames two cabinet ministers of the former National Democratic Alliance government. JPC will now have to submit the report on 2G spectrum scam by the end of the monsoon session.
Interestingly, two former allies of the government, the Trinamool Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), have also demanded that the draft report be rejected. Samajwadi Party, which supports the UPA government from outside, has also said it will not support the Congress in JPC if former telecom minister A Raja is not allowed to appear as a witness before the committee.
The opposition members in JPC have also demanded Chacko’s removal as the chief of the committee.
The next meeting of JPC is expected to be stormy as the opposition parties have decided that they will try to oust Chacko by asking for a vote in the committee. BJP leaders argue that since most members have no confidence in Chacko, the senior Congress leader must not continue as the head of the panel. However, speaker Miera Kumar has already given a ruling that it is not possible to remove a chairman of JPC unless he resigns or grounds of ill health.