Joshi's fresh bid to make PAC take up 2G report

Public Accounts Committee Chairman Murli Manohar Joshi on Saturday made a fresh attempt to make the panel take up his controversial report on the 2G scam that had questioned the role of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

Joshi circulated the report to the PAC members with a forwarding letter that he was sending them the draft report again after consulting legal experts, rules of procedures and "past precedents".

A member of the PAC said the report has 575 pages with 276 pages of documents the PAC had received from government on 2G spectrum allocation. "There are much more annexures than the previous report. Some paragraphs have been deleted. But the essence is the same," the member said.

On June 28, Joshi had made a similar attempt to place the report before the new PAC but his effort was thwarted by its United Progressive Alliance members, following which it was decided that constitutional experts would be consulted on whether the report, recently returned by Speaker Meira Kumar, can be considered by it.

In his letter to the members, Joshi said he has consulted the experts, looked into precedents and referred to rulebooks and he believes the draft report is the "unfinished agenda of the previous PAC". He has referred to the Speaker's decision to return the report as it was not adopted by the committee as per rules.

Speaker Meira Kumar had returned the report to Joshi, who was reappointed as Chairman in May, suggesting it was not supported by the entire PAC whose term ended on April 30.

The PAC meeting had on April 28 descended into chaos after the UPA managed to secure the support of Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party to secure a majority which rejected the draft report on the 2G scam that was sharply critical of the prime minister, his office and others.

Joshi had then sent the report Kumar along with a covering letter detailing the sequence of events during the meeting.