In a move that is bound to trigger fresh controversy, JPC Chairman PC Chacko on Tuesday submitted a “truncated” report to lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar by “editing” certain portions of the dissent notes on the controversial report on the 2G spectrum scam.
The report, which gave clean chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidam-baram had put the entire blame on former Telecom Minister A Raja. It will be tabled in the first week of Winter Session of Parliament.
BJP’s dissent note of 36 pages was reduced to 16 pages and CPI’s 53-page note was cut to 27 pages. Similarly, only 28 pages survive of CPI(M)’s 45-page note. “As a Chairman, I have gone through the dissent notes and expunged the unparliamentary language, irrelevant and non-factual portions.
I was constrained to expunge certain unparliamentary language and inappropriate words which are away from facts,” said Chacko. He was addressing media while releasing the report approved by UPA MPs and members of SP and BSP.
“Speaker had authorised me to release the report today itself. We will table to Parliament in the forthcoming Winter Session,” he said, releasing the 374-page bound book, including the edited dissent notes.
Seven dissent notes were submitted by 12 MPs. Six MPs of BJP-led Yashwant Sinha, CPI(M)’s Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta filed detailed dissent notes. AIADMK’s Thambidurai, DMK’s TR Baalu, BJD’s Arjun Charan Sethi and TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee also filed dissent notes, rejecting the findings of Congress dominated JPC.
In the report, Chacko had edited mostly the Opposition parties criticism of Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram and their collusion with Raja in the 2G scam. Apart form these criticisms Chacko also edited out the Oppositions’ allegations against his “partisan, and “dubious” moves and style of functioning as JPC Chairman.
The controversial report, approved by the majority votes also put blame on former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for causing loss to exchequer of more than Rs 42,000 crore. The Congress-dominated JPC took the figures from a calculation done by DoT in 2012. However, the very same report vehemently blamed former CAG Vinod Rai for huge presumptive of loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crores in 2G Scam.