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The Bharatiya Janata Party’s 36-page dissent note to the draft report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on spectrum allocations is a chargesheet against the panel’s chairman, P.C Chacko.
The six members of the party in the JPC said Chacko made a farce of the panel by working under the instructions of the Prime Minister’s Office and senior Ministers.
Without waiting for making the dissent note a part of the report, the members sent it to the Speaker saying that Chacko was likely to edit and mutilate their dissent note. The BJP said parties will now have to think twice before demanding a JPC as the spectrum JPC had done “incalculable damage” to the system of JPC.
“It is regretted that in spite of the voluminous evidence on record before the Committee, the final report chose not to fix responsibility of the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Finance Minister and many others. Our note of dissent is designed to ensure that the political accountability of this massive scam is clearly determined and fixed against all the guilty so that it serves as a lesson for the future,” Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, Gopinath Munde, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Harin Pathak and Dharmendra Pradhan, said in the dissent note.
The dissent note said the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister were equally guilty in the 2G scam “since they carried a higher responsibility.”
“The Prime Minster has failed to live up to the Constitutional duty assigned to him,” the note alleged. The note has also questioned the comments in the draft report against the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Continuing its tirade against Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, the BJP said the case of Chidambaram was even “queerer.”
The note said the Finance Ministry was of the view that the entry fee for telecom licences as fixed in 2001 needed to be revised, the initial spectrum of 4.4 MHz which was bundled with licence had also to be charged, additional spectrum beyond 4.4 MHz had to be charged at market rates and the Finance Ministry should have a say in fixing of spectrum prices.
“Strangely enough the Ministry of Finance gave up on all these points one by one and surrendered to the DoT completely in the meeting presided over by the Prime Minister on July 4, 2008,” it said
Apart from the BJP, the Left parties, DMK, AIADMK and the Biju Janata Dal members also submitted dissent notes to the panel.
Chacko said he would take a look at the veracity of the dissent notes before making them part of the report.
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