Former Telecom Minister A Raja on Monday rubbished JPC Chairman PC Chacko’s clean chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram and submitted a 100-page report holding them equally responsible for decisions taken in spectrum allotment.
There was more trouble in store for Chacko as the BJP and DMK gave breach of privilege notices against him, and the Tamil Nadu party went further seeking his removal from the post of JPC Chairman.
In his submission Raja, who was denied permission for a personal appearance before the JPC by Chacko, claimed he took all decisions with the concurrence of Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram.
Accusing Chacko of denying him an opportunity to depose before the JPC, Raja said in the covering note: “Despite my repeated requests, you have decided not to permit me to depose before the JPC. In my letter dated April 9, I had specifically informed you that I was sending a detailed written statement. Even without waiting for my statement, you have prepared a draft report and also leaked it to the media. I would submit that this is not the way the JPC is expected to function.”
Raja also blamed Chacko for not keeping the promise of providing the copy of Attorney-General Vahanvati’s deposition against him. “I always had concerns about the credibility of the JPC, the procedure it is adopting and the report it will ultimately give, and my concerns appear to be justified,” said Raja, claiming, he can provide more documents to prove his innocence.
Sources close to Raja said, he had submitted all minutes of his meeting with Chidambaram on agreement with spectrum pricing and offloading of shares to multinational companies. He also produced the meeting details with the Prime Minister along with Chidambaram.
While Raja blamed Manmohan Singh in his submission, the BJP lambasted Chacko for the “malicious activity” of indicting former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the report.
Chacko defended himself saying he did not name anybody and described only what happened during the period and the post of the persons.
In the lok Sabha, BJP leader Yashwant Sinha and DMK leader TR Baalu and in the Rajya Sabha BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad submitted breach of privilege notices.
“The way the JPC draft report was made public by none other than the JPC Chairman himself in order to condemn the NDA regime and hold us guilty, is a case in point that they are playing pure politics,” Sinha told the media after filing the notice.
Slamming the draft JPC report on the 2G scam for making observations on decisions taken during the NDA regime, BJP leader Jaswant Singh said it was absurd to find faults with then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
“I find it absurd and total travesty of facts to find fault with the functioning of a Prime Minister like Atal Bihari Vajpayee. I am not concerned about what the report has to say on my functioning as the then Finance Minister. This is not a document worth the paper on which it is printed,” he told reporters outside Parliament House. Singh, a former Finance Minister, is a member of the JPC on the 2G scam.
Asked why the NDA Government went ahead with granting concessions to telecom companies despite the issue being red flagged by then Telecom Minister Jagmohan and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, Singh said a Prime Minister should not be “subservient”. “This is cherry picking of sentences and making the whole tree out of it,” he said.
The draft JPC report on 2G scam has questioned the NDA’s decision to grant concessions to telecom companies on licence fee despite protests by former Telecom Minister Jagmohan and says the then Government had to “forego” over Rs 42,000 crore in offering Migration Package to cellular operators.
The report alleged that this decision was taken by Vajpayee in haste. It also blamed NDA Ministers Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha for providing concessions to telecom operators.
The DMK also demanded Chacko’s removal from Speaker Meira Kumar. “We have given privilege notice to the lok Sabha Speaker against the leakage of the JPC draft report by the JPC Chairman. We will ask for Chacko’s removal as he has lost the confidence of members,” Baalu said, adding that the DMK members of the Committee would submit dissenting notes to the report.
Under attack from all quarters Chacko came out with a curious argument that he did not name Vajpayee. He said, his report mentioned the posts of persons only. “I want to confirm that I have not taken anyone’s name in this report. This must be someone’s imagination. They must have calculated who was in power or in office at a particular period. I have not named Vajpayee or any other minister in the report. There is no such thing,” said Chacko.
The JPC Chairman said he was in favour of a probe into leakage of the committee’s draft report.
“If they (Opposition parties) have moved such a motion, I am with it because we have always faced this problem. At every meeting, I used to tell my colleagues that please don’t allow classified information to reach the media. But despite that, it was being leaked,” he said.
“This time also, when the draft report was prepared, I took special caution that sealed covers were made and it was sent to everyone through special messengers. How can anybody observe more caution than thisIJ If there is any confusion over leakage, then notice should be taken,” Chacko said.
Asked if he was guilty of leaking the report, Chacko said: “They (Opposition parties) have not blamed me. The matter is how it got leaked to the media. I am not accused for it.”
On whether the report would be adopted by the Committee, Chacko said: “I am not worried about numbers in the Committee. It is not a UPA or a Congress report, it is a Committee of Parliament. It is the responsibility of all the members of the Committee to get it through. I am confident that the report would be adopted.”