New Delhi:
Five BJP members today walked out of a meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that is examining the 2G telecom scam, alleging that Congress members had used "unparliamentary" language and called the panel a "kangaroo court."
Sources had earlier said that the BJP is contemplating quitting the JPC over its demand that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram depose before the panel, since it's a body where ministers can be summoned. The BJP's Yashwant Sinha said the moment his party raised this demand at the meeting, "junior members of the Congress used foul language and targeted us. We were left with no choice but to walk out."
His colleague Ravi Shankar Prasad said the Congress had provoked the walk-out with its utterances; the BJP also accused the chairman of the panel, the Congress' PC Chacko, of being a mute spectator to the Congress calling the committee a "kangaroo court."
The Congress said the BJP walkout was "premeditated and pre-orchestrated." Party spokesperson Manish Tiwari, who is also a member of the JPC, said there was a discussion on who should be summoned before the panel and who should not be and slammed the BJP for walking out. "Valid and cogent reasons must be put forth... The political party (BJP) wants to further its political agenda... If at all there are insinuations that I used any word which was unparliamentary, I reject it. I leave it to the discretion of the chairman JPC to expunge these remarks."
Sources say the meeting heated up after an argument between Mr Tiwari and Left member Gurudas Dasgupta. Mr Dasgupta said his "parliamentary decency" did not allow him to recount what had happened at the meeting. But he described today's events as "unfortunate."
The JPC chairman P C Chacko however denied that any unparliamentary or foul words were used and the BJP, unprovoked, walked out without explaining the reasons.
The BJP is demanding that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram depose before the panel. The 2G scam dates back to 2008 when the then Telecom Minister A Raja allegedly gave away telecom licences at throwaway prices. The BJP says Mr Chidambaram, as Finance Minister at the time, was aware of the blatant manipulation of guidelines by Mr Raja, and failed to interfere. Mr Chidambaram has denied the charges.
The Congress is resisting the move to summon the PM and Mr Chidambaram; it also says that if its top functionaries are made to depose, then so must those who were senior functionaries in the BJP-led NDA regime. The then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is ailing and cannot depose; Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha, BJP leaders who were Finance Ministers in the NDA regime, are both members of the JPC.
The JPC is mandated to examine policy prescriptions of successive governments in the allocation and pricing of telecom licenses and spectrum from 1998 to 2009 and to make recommendations to ensure formulation of appropriate procedures in the allocation and pricing of telecom licenses.
The committee has 30 MPs - 20 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha - from different parties. The Congress has 11 members in the committee. The BJP has six - Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Gopinath Munde, Harin Pathak and Dharmendra Pradhan. Mr Pathak was not present today.
It now seems unlikely that they BJP members would return to the JPC.
Earlier in the day, the BJP stalled Parliament demanding the Prime Minister's resignation over the government auditor's recent report on coal block allocations. Sources say the party plans to continue disruptions till the end of this week over the controversy that's being called Coal-gate, spawned by the conclusion of the Comptroller and Auditor General or CAG that the government enabled Rs. 1.86 lakh crores as "windfall gains" to private firms by giving them coal fields at a fraction of their market value.