New Delhi, April 25: The Left and Trinamul Congress members rallied with the BJP today to demand removal of Congress’ P.C. Chacko as the chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) constituted to probe the 2G allocation scam.
Apart from the BJP, 15 of the 30-member JPC, including members from the Left, Trinamul Congress, DMK, AIADMK, Janata Dal (U) and BJD, met Speaker Meira Kumar to express “no confidence” in chairman Chacko and demanded his removal for “highly partisan, unfair and prejudicial” conduct.
The 30-member strength includes the chairman.
The support of the Left and Trinamul in addition to the DMK came as a shot in the arm for the BJP, which is desperate to corner and paralyse the UPA government in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections a year ahead. BJP has decided not to allow the Parliament to function on the demand for the Prime Minister’s resignation and sacking of law minister Ashwini Kumar.
The Janata Dal (U), split with the BJP over the issue of Narendra Modi, joined the team much to the relief of the saffron party. The two heartland parties, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party, however, kept away and chose to be seen backing the government or the Congress over the BJP.
The “oust Chacko” campaign has been seen as primarily being carried out by the BJP.
Members of the party in the JPC have been gunning for the senior Congress leader heading the committee since he rejected their demand to summon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister P. Chidambaram before the panel for questioning their role in the scam.
Chacko enraged them further by giving a clean chit to the Prime Minister and finance minister and enlarged the scope of the wrongdoing in allocation of telecom licenses to the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the draft report stated.
The BJP members first held a meeting and then went to the BJD office in Parliament where all other Opposition members got together. Left’s Sitaram Yechury and Gurudas Dasgupta shared the room with Trinamul’s Kalyan Banerjee. Political enemies, DMK and AIADMK members, too, were there. All the leaders decided upon a common draft to be presented to the Speaker but preferred to give it separately on their respective letterheads.
Apart from the BJP, others were particularly peeved about the way the draft report was leaked to the media even before it reached the committee members.
“He has failed in his duty to lead the JPC to bring out the truth. Instead, he has used the JPC to conceal and subvert the truth. Therefore I/we the undersigned express no confidence in the chairman and appeal to the Speaker to immediately replace him with another member”, the memorandum submitted by the 15 members said.
Yechury charged Chacko of acting in an “improper fashion” and seeking to down play the Left’s association with the BJP to take on the government. Yechury said he would be submitting his dissent note while rejecting the draft report of the JPC.
The JPC was scheduled to meet today to adopt the draft report on the 2G allocation, but it was cancelled following the death of sitting Trinamul Congress MP Ambica Banerjee.
The meeting now would be held some time next week where the draft report will be presented.
BJP strengthened by the Opposition unity on the issue hit out at the government.
“This is the biggest scam of independent India. If Raja (former telecom minister) says the Prime Minister was in the know... then he (Prime Minister) should answer,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Attacking the Opposition move, Congress members wrote in a letter to the Speaker: “As the committee is in the process of finalising its report, they have begun to show their restlessness and resistance as their decisions have come under scanner of the committee.”
Parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath dismissed the Opposition demand as “absolutely incorrect” and “without any basis”, saying it was akin to somebody saying “after a judgment goes against him the judge should be removed”.
