UPA turns down NDA's demand for Volcker papers

The UPA government today turned down the Opposition's demand to table the documents collected by the Virender Dayal Committee from Paul Volcker, head of the Volcker panel probing the Iraqi oil-for-food scam.

Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said since the Dayal panel had been constituted to assist the Justice Pathak Inquiry Authority probing the charges of former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and the Congress having been non-contractual beneficiaries of the UN oil-for-food programme, the documents collected by them would be admissible only when Justice Pathak delivers his report.

This was a precursor to a debate which promised much but delivered little in terms of firepower from the Opposition. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi stoutly defended the government saying that since Natwar Singh, named by the Volcker report, had already resigned, and the government had set up an inquiry into the allegations, the debate on the matter was hardly expected to gain anything.

Dasmunshi also accused the previous NDA regime, particularly former Petroleum Minister Ram Naik, of knowingly abetting the corruption in oil dealings with Iraq.

He referred to a statement given by Naik in which the former minister admitted that while he, on behalf of the Indian Oil Corporation, had refused to pay the surcharge demanded by the Iraqis in July 2002, businessmen in his delegation may have paid up and that he may have 'facilitated' this transaction.

"Was it not his duty as a minister to discourage other businessmen from entering into unethical deals," said Dasmunshi, adding, "There has been an attempt to malign the Congress but the party has welcomed the inquiry, quite unlike the NDA government which refused to discuss the Tehelka defence scandal in Parliament," he said.

"Advaniji should know that mere allegations cannot be thrown at people, since he suffered due to the allegations made against him in the Jain diary/hawala case," said Dasmunshi.

Leader of the Opposition L K Advani, meanwhile, demanded that a full-fledged commission of inquiry should have been constituted by the government, instead of an inquiry authority. "An inquiry authority comes under executive rules, which means that it cannot hold open hearings and cannot determine the extent to which it wants to investigate the matter," he said.

"Every other government, whenever faced by such allegations has always constituted a full judicial commission of inquiry, which is governed by a parliamentary statute. One wonders why the government is behaving like this," he added.