LS approves JPC in 2G spectrum scam

New Delhi, Feb 24 (PTI) Lok Sabha, the lower house of the
Indian Parliament, on Thusday approved the setting up of a
Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the 2G spectrum
scam but not before the ruling Congress party and the
Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) crossed swords over
the washout of the entire Winter session and over the alleged
irregularities in mobile licensing.
The motion providing for appointment of 30 members -- 20
from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, the upper
house of the Parliament, -- was approved by a voice vote after
a four-hour debate that was marked by scenes of acrimony when
Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj attacked the government
and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal responded in equal measure.
The motion will now go to the Rajya Sabha for concurrence
and choosing 10 of its members to be part of the Committee.
The Committee will look into the telecom policy pursued
from 1998 to 2009 including the allocation and pricing of
telecom licences and spectrum and examine "irregularities and
aberrations, if any" and the consequences of their
implementation.
The Committee has been given time till the end of
the Monsoon session of Parliament to give its report.
The 20 members on the Committee from the Lok Sabha are
V Kishore Chandra Deo, Paban Singh Ghatowar, Jai Prakash
Agarwal, Deepender Singh Hooda, P C Chacko, Manish Tewari,
Nirmal Khatri, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury (all Cong), T R Baalu
(DMK), Kalyan Banerjee (TMC), Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha,
Harin Pathak, Gopinath Munde (all BJP), Sharad Yadav (JDU),
Dara Singh Chauhan (BSP), Akhilesh Yadav (SP), Gurudas
Dasgupta (CPI), Arjun Charan Sethi (BJD) and M Thambidurai
(AIADMK).
Moving the motion, Finance Minister and Leader of the
House Pranab Mukherjee said that lessons needed to be drawn by
all concerned from the deadlock, suggesting that it was
dangerous for democracy that Parliament cannot function
till you concede to a particular demand.
"Parliament cannot be mortgaged to the conceding of a
demand," he said warning if "hatred and disrespect for
parliamentary institutions was generated, it would lead to the
rise of extra-constitutional authorities" as had happened in a
neighbouring country way back in 1958 when Martial Law was
imposed.
At the outset, Mukherjee admitted his responsibility as
Leader of the House for failing to carry the Opposition with
him on the issue.
He, however, said the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
refused a JPC on Tehelka expose and the then Minister Arun
Jaitley had said that a group of MPs sitting in a JPC cannot
substitute discussion and debate on the floor of the House.
Swaraj, who was the first to speak from the Opposition,
was critical of Mukherjee for dubbing opposition as "Maoists".
Mukherjee said the Left radicals dub Parliament as an
"abode of pigs" and therefore wanted all concerned to act
responsibly.
"Was our demand (for JPC) violent or unconstitutional,"
Swaraj sought to know from Mukherjee, referring to him at the
same time as a very nice person who fails to distinguish
between proper and improper when he gets angry.
LS-LD JPC 2
At one point, Mukherjee reminded Swaraj that what he
wanted was a debate to decide on JPC but the BJP was not
ready.
Sibal sought to turn the tables on the BJP alleging that
the opposition party was not interested in a debate and wanted
a JPC without discussion as it was afraid that what had
happened during their tenure would have been exposed.
This led to sharp protests from the opposition benches
with several BJP members demanding that if such was the
government's attitude then it should withdraw the motion
itself.
The 2G spectrum scam, according to the Comptroller and
Auditor General of India, has led to a presumptive loss of Rs
1.76 lakh crore to the government and the issue has become a
major one for the Opposition which has used it to target the
government both inside and outside Parliament for the last few
months.
In the wake of the CAG report, Telecom Minister A Raja
was forced to quit and he is now in jail and the Public
Accounts Committee, CBI and other agencies are going into the
issue.
This is the first JPC to be constituted after the UPA
came to power in May, 2004 and the fifth such committee being
set up. The first was in 1987 on the Bofors payoffs.
Sibal said if one looked into the history of BJP, one
will find that whenever that party got an opportunity to
attack constitutional authority, it had done so.
He said as per an estimate of CAG, during the NDA regime
there was a loss of Rs 12,214 crore to the exchequer due to
the allocation of spectrum.
Referring to his earlier press statement where he had
dismissed the suggestion of the CAG that there was a
presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore, Sibal said he said so
because for allocation of spectrum of 6.2 Mhz, government had
never charged any money from any telecom companies till 2003
as the spectrum was given free along with the licence.
He said the first-come first-serve policy was initiated
by the NDA government and questioned who should be sent to
jail -- like former Telecom Minister A Raja -- for alleged
irregularities during the NDA government.
" ... if Raja gave spectrum free, he is a criminal. And,
if their (NDA) minister did so, he is not," he argued.