New Delhi:
An important ally of the government, the Samajwadi Party, has said that Finance Minister P Chidambaram must testify before a joint parliamentary committee that's studying the allocation of spectrum during 1999 to 2009.
The committee was set up as a corollary of the telecom scam, worth 1.76 lakh crores according to the national auditor. Today's meeting of the committee was boycotted by the opposition BJP, and saw Left and Samajwadi Party parliamentarians pressing for Mr Chidambaram's appearance. Sources say the minister is open to being examined by the panel. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who heads the Samajwadi Party (SP), is propping up the government, which is in a minority since last month.
The opposition BJP has been boycotting meetings of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that's dissecting the telecom scam because it wants the Prime Minister and Mr Chidambaram to explain to the panel's 30 members how it was executed on their watch in 2008.
The chairman of the committee, P Chacko, has so far said that's not necessary, which led to the BJP's six members skipping today's session. Mr Chacko told NDTV he will write to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Meira Kumar seeking her opinion on summons to the Finance Minister. Rules do not permit the panel to examine a minister.
The JPC chairman said today that there was "no question of the PM deposing."
Suggesting that Yashwant Sinha had targeted him personally for political points, Mr Chacko said,"This is the predicament of the chairman of a parliamentary committee. Political parties try to score brownie points. They know very well, under the rules, we cannot call the PM or a minister."
There was another flashpoint at today's meeting. Gurudas Dasgupta of the CPI was present today but left the meeting mid-way because he said Congress member Shashi Tharoor intervened to help an official who was being questioned by him, which violates protocol.
In 2008, the telecom minister was A Raja of the DMK, a senior member of the Prime Minister's coalition. He was arrested and is now on trial for conspiring with different companies to help them get out-of-turn licenses for mobile networks. 122 of those licenses were cancelled by the Supreme Court earlier this year, which ordered that they must be awarded through a new auction process.
Today, the six BJP members on the parliamentary committee including Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh, did not attend the meeting. Explaining why, Mr Sinha sent a strongly-worded letter to Mr Chacko accusing him of acting in 'autocratic' and 'non-democratic' manner.
(Read Yashwant Sinha's letter to PC Chacko)Mr Sinha writes,"The Committee must record the evidence of the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister. Their appearance in view of their role in the decision making process is absolutely necessary" to address questions which "they and they alone can answer".
Mr Sinha says that the BJP has no objection to any former minister of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government, which was replaced by the UPA in 2004, from being
summoned by the committee that's probing the telecom scam.