2G scam: Joshi submits PAC report to Speaker. Named chairman for another term

Mangalore Today / PTI

New Delhi, May 1 :  After much drama, it is clear that Murli Manohar Joshi will, as expected, be the Public Accounts Committee chairman for another term.
 
The senior BJP leader was re-appointed after his party, which is the single-largest Opposition party in Parliament, nominated him to the post. The Lok Sabha Speaker followed the convention of allowing the Leader of Opposition to pick a person of her choice after the term of the previous PAC ended yesterday.
 
In the last days of its term, there was high drama over the committee’s investigation into the 2G scam. At the heart of that was a report drafted by chairman Joshi, which criticizes Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, suggesting that not enough was done to stop A Raja of the DMK from abusing his office as Telecom Minister during the auction of 2G spectrum.

 

 

There was a political storm after the media reported on the contents of the 270-page report a couple of days before it was to be discussed and adopted by the 21 members of the PAC.

The Congress and DMK members of the committee called for Joshi’s resignation, alleging that he was "biased" in the report. They also claimed that they were not privy to the contents of the report and had been sent copies only a day before the meeting.
 
At the marathon meeting on Wednesday, where Congress and DMK members made a point-by-point rebuttal of Mr Joshi’s report, a majority 11 of the 21 members submitted in writing that they rejected the report. The nine Congress and DMK members got support from a Bahujan Samaj Party MP and another from the Samajwadi Party.
 
But Mr Joshi had walked out of the meeting by then and later claimed that he, as chairman, had already adjourned the meeting so the vote and the rejection of the report did not count. But the 11 dissenting members stuck to their guns even electing Congress leader Saifudin Soz as an acting chairman in the absence of Mr Joshi.
 
The government argued that the report had been rejected and so could not be sent to the Speaker. The Congress and DMK members said they would present their version to the Speaker along with evidence that the report had been rejected.
 
Unfazed, Mr Joshi submitted his report to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar on the last day of his term as head of the Committee yesterday.
 
Addressing a press conference, Mr Joshi said, "I have dispatched the report to the Lok Sabha Speaker’s office. The Speaker should accept the report and table it in Parliament. The government should be accountable to the people as they have a right to know where and how the money was spent. It is the job of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to find out where the money went."
 
The ball is now in the Speaker’s court and she shall have to do a fine balancing act. The Opposition has threatened to walk out of Parliament panels if the Speaker does not accept the report.