Thaindian News

New Delhi, June 28 (IANS) The political storm over the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the alleged 2G scam brewed afresh Tuesday after panel head Murli Manohar Joshi attempted in vain to re-submit the controversial findings that had been earlier trashed.

At a meeting that ended in disarray, the Congress thwarted the senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader’s attempt to table the report, which had hinted at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s role in the alleged 2G scam, before the reconstituted PAC.

Congress members, led by Jayanti Natarajan, opposed this on the ground that a report that had been rejected by the panel and returned to it by Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar could not be considered again in its original form, sources said.

Joshi, who heads the empowered panel that oversees the government’s spending, tried to overrule Natarajan’s objection.

But she was soon joined by Sanjay Nirupam, Girija Vyas, K Sudhakaran and K.S. Rao of the Congress, who vociferously argued that the 2G scam was already being probed by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) and there was no need for the PAC to get into it.

Members of BJP-led NDA parties, according to sources, were of the view that the report should be circulated again for them to read in detail.

They demanded that they be given time to read the report that was rejected by the earlier panel, whose term expired April 30.

The PAC chairman, following the sharp division in the panel, said it was decided that constitutional experts would be consulted on whether the report could be reconsidered.

“We have decided to consult constitutional experts before deciding on what to do,” he told reporters.

Joshi had drafted the report and hurriedly submitted it to the speaker’s office on April 30 despite it being rejected by a majority of PAC members during a stormy meeting two days earlier.

Meira Kumar returned the draft report, saying it had not been adopted with a majority by the panel. She also suggested that it was an “unfinished work” of the panel that completed its term.

The report was sharply critical of Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram, who was the finance minister in 2007-08 when alleged irregularities were committed in allotting licenses to use scarce radio waves for high-end mobile phone services.

Jailed former IT and communication minister A Raja is accused of selling the licenses at throwaway prices than at market rates, causing the nation huge financial losses - presumptively calculated by the government auditor at Rs.1.76 lakh crore.

The Congress later asked the BJP to “let go” off the report prepared by a PAC whose term had expired.

“When there is a new committee which has been formed, why are they after this report, especially when it has been created after holding a gun to the head of democracy,” Congress Manish Tewari asked, while speaking to reporters.

He was apparently referring to protests and arguments that forced the government to form the JPC that is headed by the Congress’ P.C. Chacko.

At the Tuesday meeting of the PAC, the sources said, Natarajan wanted to to know from Joshi the basis for his writing to the speaker about the “unruly behaviour” of the Congress members during the April 28 meeting which had ended in chaos after the Congress and its allied voted by a majority to reject the report.