After heated exchanges, JPC meet on 2G inconclusive

A meeting of Joint Parliamentary Committee examining 2G scam on Tuesday saw heated exchanges as Bharatiya Janata Party members demanded summoning of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and top PMO officials which was countered by Congress members with their own list of witnesses that included all National Democratic Alliance telecom ministers.

Amid sharp differences, the internal meeting of the JPC remained inconclusive.

JPC chairman P C Chacko is likely to table an "exhaustive" list of witnesses in the next meeting for members to decide.

Trouble started as soon as Chacko told the members that the committee, which has already got two extensions, should now start working on writing its report so that the draft could be discussed September onwards, sources said.

While BJP members agreed, they demanded that their list of witnesses including former Telecom Minister A Raja, who is the main accused in the 2G scam, Home Minister P Chidambaram, Prime Minister's Advisor T K A Nair and the PM's Principal Secretary Pulok Chatterjee, the sources said.

At this, J P Agarwal (Cong) accused BJP of trying to prolong the proceedings of the panel for electoral gains.

He is understood to have said that BJP wanted to extend the December, 2012 deadline of JPC to ensure that it is able to turn 2G scam into an electoral issue.

Amid heated exchanges, an agitated Yashwant Sinha (BJP) pressed for summoning more witnesses before finalising the draft report. He demanded summoning of the prime minister and top PMO officials, the sources said.

The BJP members also wanted summoning of former Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, RBI governor D Subbarao and Attorney General G E Vahanvati.

To counter this, Congress members, including Manish Tewari, wanted Telecom Ministers of NDA government like Sushma Swaraj, Jagmohan and Arun Shourie to be summoned.