Communist Party of India leader Gurudas Dasgupta tells Saubhadra Chatterji why the Opposition parties are adamant on a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the telecom spectrum controversy. Edited excerpts:
Why is the Opposition so adamant on a JPC probe, when those in the past have yielded little result?
A JPC is the most effective mechanism to deal with the 2G spectrum scam. A scam of such huge magnitude, involving a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore, must be investigated by a JPC. This government is consistently opposing this common demand of all opposition parties.
I totally deny the charge that previous JPCs have not yielded any result. The JPC set up after the Harshad Mehta scam, in which I was a member, made many important recommendations and many of these were implemented. It is another matter that many of those decisions were later revoked.
You are giving the example of only one JPC. What about that on Bofors, where the opposition members finally resigned en masse?
Bofors was a different issue. I can tell you that this time, opposition leaders will not resign. We want to go into the policy loopholes of this spectrum issue.
Congress managers feel you want a JPC to harass the Prime Minister. Congress President Sonia Gandhi had recently slammed the Opposition and recalled that during the 2009 election, you targeted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and you had to bite the dust.
Let Sonia Gandhi bite the dust in Bihar. Let her bite the dust in Tamil Nadu. We are pursuing a legitimate demand. It’s a wrong perception that the JPC members will try to go after individuals and ministers. It is not our intention to malign individuals. We want to look into the policy issue and make concrete suggestions to plug loopholes.
I can also tell you that the entire Congress is not opposed to a JPC. Many top Congress leaders have told us privately that government managers should accept a JPC to end this stalemate. I can’t name these leaders, but it is clear that there are different power games taking place inside the ruling establishment.
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The government is offering to place the ongoing CBI probe on 2G spectrum under direct supervision of the Supreme Court. Why is this not enough?
There are several precedents where a parliamentary probe has run simultaneously with Supreme Court cases or CBI inquiries. Let CBI do its job. We are not bothered about that. But Parliament has its own right to know what went wrong in the 2G scam. Why should we give up our power to CBI or any other government agency?
Moreover, during the tenure of the NDA and the UPA, CBI has become a political tool in the hand of the government. Tell me what the CBI has achieved in the fodder scam involving Lalu Prasad, the disproportionate assets case of Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav? This government knows how to use the CBI for its benefits.
In 2008, you joined hands with the BJP to topple this government but failed. Are you not worried about the perception that the Left is again having a nexus with the BJP against this government?
There is no nexus between the Left and the BJP. This is a malicious campaign by government managers. This Congress-led government took the help of the BJP to pass the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill. Was it not a nexus between the Congress and the BJP? Is it a nexus only when the BJP and Left parties support a common cause? At times, opposition parties tend to support a common cause. Like price rise, opposed by both the BJP and the Left. We were (both) totally opposed to Pranab Mukherjee’s anti-people policies that led to rise in prices of essential commodities.