Chacko should give PAC comments in writing: Joshi

With Joint Parliamentary Committee chairman P C Chacko stating that the Parliament Accounts Committee should confine itself to the Comptroller and Auditor General report on 2G spectrum allocation, PAC chief Murli Manohar Joshi on Wednesday refused to join issues with him. He said Chacko should give his suggestions in writing.

"Mr Chacko is a senior and seasoned member of Parliament. And if he has any suggestions or observations to make about the PAC, he should better write to us. I will take into consideration when such a communication reaches me," Joshi told mediapersons outside the Parliament complex.

He was reacting to questions on what he felt about Chacko's suggestion that the PAC should confine itself to looking into the CAG report on 2G spectrum allocation. Joshi has always maintained that the PAC had wide-ranging powers which go beyond examining just the CAG reports on various issues.

This had earlier caused some heartburn in the Bharatiya Janata Party itself, as his 'proactive' approach to the 2G issue was being seen within the party as weakening the fight for the formation of the JPC. The PAC, headed by the BJP leader, had called for the deposition of a journalist who wrote on 2G spectrum scam and editors of magazines which published the transcripts of telephonic conversations of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia with industrialists, journalists and politicians.

The PAC is also set to call Radia for examination, and also senior journalists whose conversations figure in the tapes. The formation of the JPC last month brought down the curtains on a three-month deadlock in Parliament between the government and the opposition, which latched on to a CAG report on alleged irregularities in 2G spectrum allocations, and pegged the presumptive loss to the national exchequer at Rs 1.76 lakh crore.