Congress wants Jaswant, Yashwant withdraw from JPC

he ruling Congress party has demanded withdrawal of Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha from the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe 2G spectrum scam, on ?moral grounds?.

In a bid to pressurize the BJP, the Congress has also replaced its nominee Abhishek Singhvi, who was a senior advocate for cellular operators, with Jayanthi Natrajan.

Sinha was the Finance Minister in the NDA regime, while Singh headed a Group of Ministers (GoM) on Telecom during that time.

?I had appeared as a senior advocate for cellular operators and had attacked the telecom policies from 2002 to 2004 when Pramod Mahajan, Arun Shourie and Ram Vilas Paswan were telecom ministers in the NDA government,? Singhvi told reporters.

?So, I had requested the Rajya Sabha chairman for recusal and the request has been accepted,? Singhvi said.

?Like Singhvi, Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha too should withdraw as a member of JPC on moral grounds,? said a senior Congress leader.
Union Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday moved the motion for appointment of Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) in the Rajya Sabha to probe the 2G spectrum allocation scam even as all members of the panel were named.

The names of the 10 members from the Upper House have been declared, completing the 30-member JPC, which draws the remaining 20 members from the Lok Sabha.

?A joint committee of the Houses consisting of 30 members, 20 from Lok Sabha and 10 from Rajya Sabha, be constituted to examine policy prescriptions and their interpretation thereafter by successive governments, including decisions of the Union Cabinet and the consequences thereof, in the allocation and pricing of telecom licences and spectrum from 1998 to 2009,? Sibal said, moving the motion.

The members from Rajya Sabha are: PJ Kurien, Jayanthi Natarajan and Praveen Rashtrapal (Congress), Tiruchi Siva (DMK), Yogendra P Trivedi (Nationalist Congress Party), SS Ahluwalia and Ravi Shankar Prasad (Bharatiya Janata Party), Ramchandra Prasad Singh (Janata Dal-United), Satish Chandra Misra (Bahujan Samaj Party) and Sitaram Yechury (Communist Party of India-Marxist).

Natarajan is a last minute inclusion after Abhishek Manu Singhvi backed out, stating that he had appeared for cellular operator in the court as a senior advocate.

The Lok Sabha members in the JPC are; V Kishore Chandra Deo, Paban Singh Ghatowar, Jai Prakash Agarwal, Deepender Singh Hooda, PC Chacko, Manish Tewari, Nirmal Khatri, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury (Congress), TR Baalu (DMK), Kalyan Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Harin Pathak, Gopinath Munde (BJP), Sharad Yadav (JD-U), Dara Singh Chauhan (BSP), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party), Gurudas Dasgupta (CPI), Arjun Charan Sethi (Biju Janata Dal) and M. Thambidurai (AIADMK).

Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar will nominate a member of the JPC as the chairman of the panel.

The JPC is expected to submit its findings by the Monsoon Session of the Parliament.

It will look into formulation of policy during the spectrum allocation in 2008.

Meanwhile, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday placed before the Supreme Court the status report of its ongoing probe into the 2G scam in a sealed cover.

CBI counsel KK Venugopal placed the report before a Supreme Court panel, comprising justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly, which expressed satisfaction at the ongoing probe.

?63 persons including promoters and CEOs of 10 companies have come under the scanner of the CBI in its probe into the 2G spectrum scam,? the advocate informed the court, while submitting the status report.

Additional solicitor general Indira Jaisingh, appearing for the central government which is also a party in the case, informed the court that the Union Law minister, advocating a special court to try the 2G scam case, has written to the Delhi High Court chief justice asking him to constitute a court and identify a judge for this purpose.

The apex court listed the matter for next hearing on March 15, asking the CBI and Enforcement Directorate to place its reports by March 10.

The CBI has already arrested several persons, including former Telecom minister A Raja, in the scam.

A Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK) MP, Raja was forced to resign as an Union minister in November last year following Opposition pressure after a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on the 2G scam estimated at Rs 1.76 lakh crore loss to the country?s exchequer due to wrongful allotment of 2G Spectrum.

Raja is accused of criminal conspiracy and using his office as Telecom Minister to benefit a few telecom operators when 2G spectrum licences were being allocated in 2008 for mobile network.

He is currently languishing in the Tihar Jail at the end of his CBI custody.