A Raja must be allowed to depose before JPC
Former Union Minister for Telecommunications A Raja's continued insistence on appearing before the Joint Parliamentary Committee that is looking into the 2G Spectrum scam and the equally persistent opposition to it from the Congress led by its senior member PC Chacko, who is the parliamentary panel's chairman, are both understandable. Raja is desperate to demonstrate that the arbitrary decisions which he had taken as a Minister, and which led to a rip-off of monumental proportion, were not his alone. They had been endorsed by various senior functionaries of the Congress-led UPA Government. He has time and again said that Mr P Chidambaram as Union Minister for Finance had cleared his so-called ‘first-come-first-served' policy of awarding 2G Spectrum licences that did away with competitive bidding. Not just that, Raja has even claimed that his decision, which eventually led the Supreme Court to cancel all the licences given on the flawed basis by the UPA Government, had the blessings of no less than the Prime Minister. Given this backdrop, it is obvious that the former Telecommunications Minister wants to break the image of being the sole culprit. As for the Congress, it is determined to block Raja's deposition because, once Raja speaks before the JPC, the party will be unable to dismiss or gloss over his revelations before the panel in the manner they have been doing until now. Worse could follow for the Congress. Opposition members in the JPC will not only extract the last bit of information from Raja which would leave the Congress red in the face, they could even revive their demand to summon Mr Chidambaram before the panel. Until now, the Congress has managed to stall the issue on the ground that no purpose would be served by asking the Union Finance Minister to depose. The Congress is also worried that the Opposition would thereafter even seek the Prime Minister's appearance before the JPC. All of these would be hugely embarrassing to the party.
But the Congress is worried by more than just the embarrassment. It has been desperately trying all these months since the scam broke out, since Raja was sent to jail, and since the licences fraudulently given were cancelled, to give the impression that neither Prime Minister Manmohan Singh nor the party's other senior members such as Mr Chidambaram had any role in the massive irregularities. The Opposition has naturally not bought the argument, because the fact is that the scam happened in the full knowledge of the Prime Minister who had done nothing to prevent it, and that Mr Chidambaram had indeed cleared Raja's disastrous first-come-first-served scheme. The Congress's carefully orchestrated campaign risks being exposed in the JPC as a sham if Raja begins to sing before the panel. But, regardless of all that, the damage to the party's image has already been done. The damage is irreversible.