PM's refusal to appear before JPC disappointing: Yashwant

The Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha, who is a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committe on 2G issue, on Monday wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stating he is "surprised and disappointed" over his refusal to depose before the panel.

Sinha, who earlier written a letter to Dr Singh asking that he should present himself before the Joint Parliamentary Committee, said he was unhappy with the response of the prime minister- through a mail- that he does not have to depose and has nothing to hide. The letter written on Tuesday is a response to the prime minister's communication.

In the letter, Sinha states, "Of course, it is for the JPC to decide whether you appear as a witness or not, but the same principle applied to the PAC when you made a grand offer publicly to appear before it. If you were right in making that offer, how can you not be wrong in not making that offer to the JPC?"

He also takes on Dr Singh for stating that all documents have been furnished to the JPC and is not hiding anything. "I find it difficult to agree with your claim that neither the government nor you have anything to hide in this matter. If it was so, then a number of crucial documents could not have been held back from the JPC as the government did. These documents had to be literally ferreted out of government by the JPC when the media brought them into the public domain," Sinha said.

The BJP MP further maintained that if the JPC is expected to draw its conclusions only on the basis of records and documents then "clearly it has wasted its time by calling so many witnesses to depose before it".