PM could have saved winter session: Left on JPC

The Left parties on Tuesday attacked Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh for "virtually justifying" that a Joint Parliamentary Committee inquiry into the 2G spectrum scam was not required but was accepted by the government only to pacify the opposition.

Welcoming the government's decision to form the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the issue, Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury said the PM virtually justified that the JPC is not required and the Opposition's demand was accepted to allow Parliament to function.

"Better late than never. If Dr Singh had agreed to the setting up of JPC earlier the winter session would not have been wasted," he said.

Yechury slammed Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal for his statement that the 2G Spectrum amounted to zero loss of public money and the PM for comparing with the subsidies being granted to the poor on food grains.

"Two companies, namely Swan and Unitech, made six times the money they paid to the government by selling off part of licences to other potential buyers. We wanted a JPC to probe how the system had been manipulated. The JPC will recommend some measures so that the system is not manipulated again," he said.

CPI National Secretary D Raja said that instead of blaming the Opposition, the PM should adopt a self-critical position. "The same good sense should have prevailed during the winter session," he said.

"The prime minister is making a virtue out of the government's inaction of the past three months and looking to be benevolent in granting a JPC," Yechury said, adding that this approach "actually reflected the state of the government which was in the grip of a directionless drift".

On the composition of the JPC, Yechury said it should be a 30-member committee with one chairman as has been the norm for all the parliamentary standing committees where 20 MPs represent Lok Sabha and 10 the Rajya Sabha. He also warned the government not to manipulate the JPC formation in a manner to keep certain parties out or certain parties in. "We want fair representation," he said.

On whether the Left would want the scams relating to the Commonwealth Games be brought into the JPC's ambit, Yechury said, "We don't have any problems with that. But that should not stop the JPC from launching its activities and begin probing the spectrum scam."