lok Sabha Speaker is shielding Chacko in vain
At a time when a majority of the members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee probing the 2G Spectrum scam have rejected the panel's draft report and demanded panel Chairman PC Chacko's resignation, it is rather patronising for the lok Sabha Speaker to ask the members to ‘sort out’ their differences with the Chairman. They had not approached her to gain such words of wisdom but had called upon her to seek Mr Chacko's resignation because they had lost trust in him. Speaker Meira Kumar is aware of the situation, and she also knows that the JPC cannot function as long as the senior Congress leader remains at the helm. But she has shut her eyes to the ground reality and gone to great lengths to quote provisions which do not permit her to sack the JPC chief or even direct him to resign. But it's not the legality that is a subject of discussion; it's the propriety of Mr Chacko clinging on to his position even when most members of the panel do not want him to remain in office. Instead of advising the members of the JPC to co-operate with the Chairman, Ms Kumar could have used her position to make Mr Chacko see reason and give way for another person to head the parliamentary panel. If she hasn't done that, it is clearly because she doesn't want to add to the embarrassments of the Congress. But the relief which she has given to the JPC Chairman is unlikely to help Mr Chacko much. His position has now become so tenuous that he is even reluctant to summon a meeting of the JPC. That he eventually will have to do so, is a different matter. And when such a meeting takes place, he will not be in a position to any further protect his and his party's involvement in the scam. In any case, the Congress and the UPA regime which it leads is already far too exposed to manage a credible face-saver.
Even so, Mr Chacko is not sitting idle. He has been crafting a strategy, no doubt with the connivance of key Congress leaders — whose full-time job it has become to brazen out all scandals and spin fantastic defences — by which he can push through the draft report with minor changes as the final version, and relegate objections from members into the ‘dissent note' section. But, unfortunately for him, that tactic may just fail to work. With at least 16 of the 30 members of the panel expressing their open disagreement with the draft report, the document as it exists cannot be taken as an expression of the JPC's views. Moreover, you cannot have the objections of a majority of the members tucked away as ‘dissent’ and then present the minority view as the panel's opinion. However, there is a way out of the crisis: Mr Chacko must go; the draft report must be rejected; and, former Union Minister for Telecommunications A Raja, Union Minister for Finance P Chidambaram and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must depose before the JPC. A final report that takes into account all their statements will have credibility.