JOIN USThe controversial report of the joint parliamentary committee on the 2G scam which gives a clean chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, along with six dissent notes, will be submitted to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar on Tuesday.
JPC Chairman P C Chacko is scheduled to meet the Speaker at her residence on Tuesday afternoon to submit the 500-page report which also has exonerated Finance Minister P Chidambaram of having any role in the alleged scam.
Six members of the JPC representing the BJP, CPI, CPM, AIADMK, DMK and the BJD had given dissent notes against the report, which was adopted by a 16-11 majority at a meeting on September 27.
Chacko is learnt to have edited five of the six dissent notes for incorrect information, insinuation and unsubstantiated claims as mandated by the rules and procedures governing the functioning of the Committee. The dissent note submitted by BJD member Arjun Charan Sethi is learnt to have only one sentence and thus there was no scope for editing.
The submission of the report would bring the curtains down on an elaborate exercise undertaken by the Committee after the Opposition stalled an entire session of Parliament in December 2010. The Committee was set up in February 2011 and had quite an eventful tenure which saw the Opposition members expressing no-confidence in the Chairman and threatening to quit the panel only to rejoin the proceedings later.
The report has termed as “ill-conceived” the presumptive loss to the exchequer of Rs 1.76 lakh crore, estimated by the Comptroller and Auditor General in its controversial report on the 2G spectrum allocations.
The report also accused then Telecom minister A Raja of forging the press note of January 7, 2008, before the spectrum allocations were made, and marking it as “appd (approved)” .